SimTech-Project: Multi-scale multi-physics modeling of complex systems

Flow and transport phenomena in porous media are the governing processes in many natural,industrial, and biological systems. These processes occur on different spatial and temporalscales and may also differ locally. On the one hand, highly complex processes can occur inparts of a system. These require more complex model formulations as well as a fine spatial andtemporal resolution. Physically simpler processes in other parts of the system may allow simpli-fied models and an examination on coarser scales. On the other hand, porous media are ingeneral heterogeneous on every spatial scale. Thus, depending on the processes, the hetero-geneities give another constraint for a sufficient spatial resolution. In recent years we have de-veloped multi-physics methods, which are very efficient for problems of locally differing com-plexity and multi-scale methods which allow for decreasing the global degrees of freedom forproblems including highly resolved heterogeneous porous media. The aim of this project is todevelop an adaptive multi-scale-multi-physics toolbox which enables the simulation of complexlarge scale porous media applications. In a first step the existing multi-scale and multi-physicsmethods have to be combined and unified. Besides efficiency, robustness is a key issue for thesimulation of complex realistic applications. Thus, in a second step new numerical methods andmodel concepts will be included to gain robustness and flexibility. In the final step the focus ison the application of the method to a real-site large-scale example. We think that the combina-tion of efficient multi-scale-multi-physics strategies and the computational power of parallel in-frastructures like high performance computers or clusters can open new possibilities for theaccurate simulation of challenging large-scale applications in porous media, which are, for ex-ample, gas storage in the subsurface, thermal energy production from geothermal sources, orinvestigation of nuclear storage sites. The outcome of this project will play a decisive role re-garding the success of the common benchmark case of the SimTech Project Network 5, drivenby the SimTech vision "Towards Interactive Environmental Engineering".
This is a follow-up project to: Multi-Scale-, Multi-Physics-Ansätze zur Berechnung von Strömungs- und Transportvorgängen in porösen Medien

Helmig, Rainer
Flemisch, Bernd

Schneider, Martin

LH2

06/2013 - 06/2016

SimTech / Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)