Advances on mesh generation in numerical simulation of fractured network system

Abstract

Generally, meshing a finite model is often a significant portion of the time for obtaining results from finite element solution. The meshing quality of the discrete model for simulating geological problems influences the accuracy, convergence and efficiency of the solution. This paper focuses on mesh generation in numerical simulation of fractured network system in geological problems. Usually initial cracks exist in such system, and new cracks will generate during deformation of geological media. In this paper, a meshing approach that takes mesh self-adaptation with crack extension into account is proposed, which includes: geometric data cleaning of cracks, construction of cracks, fast node inserting and triangulation, mesh deformation, local re-meshing, and mesh quality improvement. The proposed approach is successfully applied to modeling of two and three-dimensional discrete fractured network (DFN) in geological problems.