Multinumerical and Multiphysical Reservoir Simulation Models

Dr. Klíe's research focuses on optimizing algorithms for data-driven applications that couple geophysical modeling and flow simulation. In a world of diminishing resources, industry is concerned with achieving a broad computational competency in monitoring and optimizing oil and gas production as new technologies are applied. The Center for Subsurface Modeling has developed the concept of the Instrumented Oil Field, and in particular Dr. Klíe and colleagues have developed an Integrated Parallel Accurate Reservoir Simulator (IPARS). The IPARS facility enables the coupling of codes that handle multiple physical regimes (underground structure; fluid flow of oil, gas, and water through porous media; effects of well management on reservoir parameters), often with differing numerical methods (fluid dynamics, finite-element, and other codes). In this project, Dr. Klíe and his group are using the Lonestar machine at TACC to analyze the efficiency with which the IPARS structure handles very large scale cases across more than 64 processors and more than 5 million IPARS "gridblocks."