Modeling anisotropic flow and heat transport by using mimetic finite differences

Modeling anisotropic flow in porous or fractured rock often assumes that the permeability tensor is diagonal, which means that its principle directions are always aligned with the coordinate axes. However, the permeability of a heterogeneous anisotropic medium usually is a full tensor. For overcoming this shortcoming, we use the mimetic finite difference method (mFD) for discretizing the flow equation in a hydrothermal reservoir simulation code, SHEMAT-Suite, which couples this equation with the heat transport equation. We verify SHEMAT-Suite-mFD against analytical solutions of pumping tests, using both diagonal and full permeability tensors. We compare results from three benchmarks for testing the capability of SHEMAT-Suite-mFD to handle anisotropic flow in porous and fractured media. The benchmarks include coupled flow and heat transport problems, three-dimensional problems and flow through a fractured porous medium with full equivalent permeability tensor. It shows firstly that the mimetic finite difference method can model anisotropic flow both in porous and in fractured media accurately and its results are better than those obtained by the multi-point flux approximation method in highly anisotropic models, secondly that the asymmetric permeability tensor can be included and leads to improved results compared the symmetric permeability tensor in the equivalent fracture models, and thirdly that the method can be easily implemented in existing finite volume or finite difference codes, which has been demonstrated successfully for SHEMAT-Suite.