Warren Lecture with Mary F. Wheeler

"Dynamic adaptivity for coupled flow and geomechanics in unconventional reservoirs using a posteriori error estimation and spacetime modeling"

ABSTRACT: Coupled multiphase flow, geochemistry, and geomechanics models are receiving growing research interests for applications in unconventional reservoirs that include geological CO₂ sequestration, geothermal and recently, hydrogen storage. These multiphysics and multiscale  simulations are computationally expensive and require preservation of physics, chemistry, and biology across spatial and temporal scales. In addition, these algorithms must be able to handle efficiently high performance computing, adaptive mesh refinement and highly nonlinear algebraic systems with rough coefficients. Additional computational issues include data extraction, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and machine learning. Wheeler discusses two high fidelity approaches that have been introduced for unconventional reservoirs that show promise for modeling reservoir energy production: a posteriori error estimation for coupling of multiphase and geomechanics and space time modeling for multiphase flow.

Mary F. Wheeler's expertise is in the numerical solution of coupled partial differential equations. Her research areas include modeling reactive and multiphase flows and parallel computations.