Summary In this paper, we propose and analyze two stabilized mixed finite element methods for the dual‐porosity‐Stokes model, which couples the free flow region and microfracture‐matrix system through four interface conditions on an interface. The first stabilized mixed finite element method is a coupled method in the traditional format. Based on the idea of partitioned time stepping, the four interface conditions, and the mass exchange terms in the dual‐porosity model, the second stabilized mixed finite element method is decoupled in two levels and allows a noniterative splitting of the coupled problem into three subproblems. Due to their superior conservation properties and convenience of the computation of flux, mixed finite element methods have been widely developed for different types of subsurface flow problems in porous media. For the mixed finite element methods developed in this article, no Lagrange multiplier is used, but an interface stabilization term with a penalty parameter is added in the temporal discretization. This stabilization term ensures the numerical stability of both the coupled and decoupled schemes. The stability and the convergence analysis are carried out for both the coupled and decoupled schemes. Three numerical experiments are provided to demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency, and applicability of the proposed methods.
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A macroelement stabilization for mixed finite element/finite volume discretizations of multiphase poromechanics
Strong coupling between geomechanical deformation and multiphase fluid flow appears in a variety of geoscience applications. A common discretization strategy for these problems is a continuous Galerkin finite element scheme for the momentum balance equation and a finite volume scheme for the mass balance equations. When applied within a fully implicit solution strategy, however, this discretization is not intrinsically stable. In the limit of small time steps or low permeabilities, spurious oscillations in the piecewise-constant pressure field, i.e., checkerboarding, may be observed. Further, eigenvalues associated with the spurious modes will control the conditioning of the matrices and can dramatically degrade the convergence rate of iterative linear solvers. Here, we propose a stabilization technique in which the mass balance equations are supplemented with stabilizing flux terms on a macroelement basis. The additional stabilization terms are dependent on a stabilization parameter. We identify an optimal value for this parameter using an analysis of the eigenvalue distribution of the macroelement Schur complement matrix. The resulting method is simple to implement and preserves the underlying sparsity pattern of the original discretization. Another appealing feature of the method is that mass is exactly conserved on macroelements, despite the addition of artificial fluxes. The efficacy of the proposed technique is demonstrated with several numerical examples.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1914780
- PAR ID:
- 10162828
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computational Geosciences
- ISSN:
- 1420-0597
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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