Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T08:31:23.425Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comparison of discrete fracture network and equivalent continuum simulations of fluid flow through two-dimensional fracture networks for the DECOVALEX–2011 project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

C. T. O. Leung ,
A. R. Hoch  and
R. W. Zimmerman
C. T. O. Leung*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK
A. R. Hoch
Affiliation:
AMEC, Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QB, UK
R. W. Zimmerman
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK
*
*E-mail: c.leung08@imperial.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Fluid flow through a two-dimensional fracture network has been simulated using a discrete fracture model. The computed field-scale permeabilities were then compared to those obtained using an equivalent continuum approach in which the permeability of each grid block is first obtained by performing fine-scale simulations of flow through the fracture network within that region. In the equivalent continuum simulations, different grid-sizes were used, corresponding to N by N grids with N = 10, 40, 100 and 400. The field-scale permeabilities found from the equivalent continuum simulations were generally within 10% of the values found from the discrete fracture simulations. The discrepancies between the two approaches seemed to be randomly related to the grid size, as no convergence was observed as N increased. An interesting finding was that the equivalent continuum approach gave accurate results in cases where the grid block size was clearly smaller than the 'representative elementary volume'.

Keywords

permeabilitydiscrete fracture networkeffective continuum modelrepresentative elementary volumeREV
Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 76 , Issue 8 , December 2012 , pp. 3179 - 3190
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
© [2012] The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2012

References

Baghbanan, A. and Jing, L. (2007) Hydraulic properties of fractured rock masses with correlated fracture length and aperture. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, 44, 704–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bear, J. (1972) Dynamics of Fluids in Porous Media. American Elsevier, New York, 784 pp.Google Scholar
de Marsily, G. (1986) Quantitative Hydrogeology. Academic Press, San Diego, USA, 464 pp.Google Scholar
Jaeger, J.C., Cook, N.G.W. and Zimmerman, R.W. (2007) Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics. Wiley- Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 488 pp.Google Scholar
Long, J.C.S., Remer, J.S., Wilson, C.R. and Witherspoon, P.A. (1982) Porous media equivalents for networks of discontinuous fractures. Water Resources Research, 18, 645–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Min, K.-B., Jing, L. and Stephansson, O. (2004) Determining the equivalent permeability tensor for fractured rock masses using a stochastic REV approach: method and application to the field data from Sellafield, UK. Hydrogeology Journal, 12, 497–510.Google Scholar
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (2010) Geological Disposal: An Overview of the Generic Disposal System Safety Case. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Report NDA/RWMD/010.Google Scholar
Neretnieks, I. (1993) Solute transport in fractured rock - applications to radionuclide waste repositories. Pp. 39–127.in: Flow and Contaminant Transport in Fractured Rock (J. Bear C.-F. Tsang and G. de Marsily, editors). Academic Press, San Diego, USA.Google Scholar
Serco (2011a) NAPSAC Technical Summary: release 10.2. Serco Energy, Didcot, UK.Google Scholar
Serco (2011b) NAMMU Technical Summary: release 10.2. Serco Energy, Didcot, UK.Google Scholar
SKB (2009) Design Premises for a KBS-3V Repository Based on the Results from the Safety Assessment SR-Can and Some Subsequent Analyses. SKB Rep o r t TR-09–22. Svensk Kä rnbrä nslehantering AB, Stockholm, Sweden.Google Scholar
Tsang, C.-F. (2009) Introductory editorial to the special issue on the DECOVALEX-THMC project. Environmental Geology, 57, 1217–1219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X. and Sanderson, D.J. (2002) Numerical Modelling and Analysis of Fluid flow and Deformation of Fractured Rock Masses. Elsevier, London, 300 pp.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, R.W. and Bodvarsson, G.S. (1996a) Effective transmissivity of a two-dimensional fracture network. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, 33, 433–438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, R.W. and Bodvarsson, G.S. (1996b) Hydraulic conductivity of rock fractures. Transport in Porous Media, 23, 1–30.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, R.W., Hadgu, T. and Bodvarsson, G.S. (1996) A new lumped-parameter model for flow in unsaturated dual-porosity media. Advances in Water Resources, 19, 317–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar