Speaker
Description
When dealing with poro-fractured media, performing efficient simulations of
physical phenomena such as the transport of contaminants, subsidence or com-
puting the hydraulic head distribution can be very challenging due to the high
number of possible geometrical configurations that have to be taken into ac-
count. Recently, the flexibility of the Virtual Element Method in dealing with
complex geometries has been exploited in order to successfully tackle the mesh
generation issues that arise when performing simulations on Discrete Fracture
Networks [1–4], that represent the fractures inside rocks as sets of planar poly-
gons intersecting each other in space. These networks are usually randomly
generated starting from statistic distributions of the physical properties of the
soil and fractures can thus intersect with all sort of configurations, including,
for example, the case of intersections that are parallel but very close to each
other, or intersect with very small angles. The proposed strategies start from
triangulations that are generated independently of intersections and are cut
into polygons by the intersections. This allows to apply standard domain de-
composition techniques (suitable for a parallel implementation of the code) and
to discretize each fracture independently, possibly using different approaches:
standard and mixed Virtual Elements have been used, obtaining solutions that
can be either strongly or weakly continuous, and very good approximations of
the fluxes that enter or leave each fracture at intersections.
References
[1] M. F. Benedetto, S. Berrone, and A. Borio. “The Virtual Element Method for underground flow simulations in fractured media”. In: Advances in Discretization Methods. Vol. 12. SEMA SIMAI Springer Series. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 167–186. doi: 10.1007/978-
3-319-41246-7_8.
[2] M.F. Benedetto, S. Berrone, and S. Scialò. “A Globally Conforming Method For Solving Flow in Discrete Fracture Networks using the Virtual Element Method”. In: Finite Elem. Anal. Des. 109 (2016), pp. 23–36. doi: 10.1016/j.finel.2015.10.003.
[3] M.F. Benedetto et al. “A Hybrid Mortar Virtual Element Method For Discrete Fracture Network Simulations”. In: J. Comput. Phys. 306 (2016), pp. 148–166. doi: 10.1016/j.jcp.2015.11.034.
[4] Matı́as Fernando Benedetto, Andrea Borio, and Stefano Scialò. “Mixed Virtual Elements for Discrete Fracture Network simulations”. In: Finite Elements in Analysis & Design 134 (2017), pp. 55–67. doi: 10.1016/j.finel.2017.05.011.
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