GEG Group
CPG
TANGO
ETH Zurich

Thermo-Fluid-Structure Interaction Based on the Fictitious Domain Method: Application to Dry Rock Simulations

2020Journal Article

Abstract

Enhanced Geothermal Systems(EGS) generate geothermal energy without the need for natural convective hydrothermal resources by enhancing permeability through hydraulic fracturing. EGS involve complex and highly nonlinear multiphysics processes and face several technical challenges that govern productivity and associated risks in a wide range of reservoir engineering problems.Numericalsimulations offer a unique opportunity to improve the hydraulic stimulation design and investigate their long-term performance. In this work, we present a thermo-hydro–mechanical coupling based on the fictitious domain method. Fictitious domain methodsinclude nonconforming mesh approaches that rely on the use of different discretizationsfor the solid and the fluid domain. We consider the governing equations of linear thermo-elasticity to model the heat transfer in dry and hot rocks.Navier-Stokes equations and heat convection equationsare adopted for describingthe thermal flux in an incompressible fluidflow. The two problems are coupled in a staggered manner through the variational transfer. Indeed, the use of the variational transfer allows simplifying the setup of fracture simulations with complex surfaces embedded in the fluid domain, thus avoiding the inconvenient mesh generation required bythe boundary fitted methods. The presented computational framework is validated by comparing with analytical solutions of two-dimensional benchmarks. Finally, we show that our framework provides high flexibility and cansimulatethe thermo-hydro–mechanical coupling between fluid and idealized fracture asperities.