Phase field model for the numerical simulation of salt tectonics
Andre L. Rossa1; Alvaro L. G. A. Coutinho2; José J. Camata2; Daniel F. M. Vasconcelos3
1 RANDS; 2 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; 3 Statoil
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0551
Resumo
The study of the salt tectonics has received much attention in recent times. Geologists and reservoir engineers have devoted great effort to quantitatively understand the phenomenon that has decisive impact on the exploitation of oil and gas offshore Brazil, especifically in the called pre-salt layer. In this work we applied the residual-based Allen-Cahn phase field model in order to numerically simulate the displacement due diapiric motion. It is assumed that the main driven force arises from buoyancy since the salt is lighter than the overburdening sedimentary material. The phase field model is able to track the interface between the two media as well to minimize volume losses. The incompressible Navier-Stokes coupled with the transport equations for energy and phase-field are used to approximate the main processes related with the interface tension and gravity force. The implementation has been performed using the libMesh finite element library, which provides support for AMR/C and parallel computations. Example computations illustrate the good properties of the present simulation capabilities.
Palavras-chave: salt tectonics; phase field; stabilized finite elements; mesh adaptivity; parallel computing