Petrel Advanced Gridding & Upscaling

Use a wide range of gridding and upscaling techniques

Resample fine-scaled geological models to coarser-scale simulation while still preserving important details in the geologic model. An assortment of averaging methods includes a flexible tensor upscaling function for determining effective permeability in each simulation cell.

Advanced gridding techniques include:

• Local gridding (LGR) — to create small cells around wells, surface, or polygons for improved resolution
• Stair step (IJK) gridding — to ensure grid orthogonality when faults are highly inclined
  

Advantages

• Preserve geologic knowledge scale—construct a simulation grid from the same 3D model as your fine-scale geological grid
• Get an accurate upscaled representation of your modeled properties—from standard averaging or flow-based tensor techniques  
• Capture complex structural or near-wellbore effects—using advanced gridding techniques   

Flow-based tensor upscaling—how it works

When upscaling permeability from a fine geological grid to a coarser simulation grid, a block of grid cells from the fine grid will have direction-dependant permeability. This is modeled using a permeability tensor.

The default output is permeability properties for X, Y, and Z. You can also request coupling terms XY, XZ, and YZ. In situations where there are only a few cells in each coarser cell, you can define a skin zone that includes additional cells outside the coarse cell to calculate the upscaled permeability. The larger zone improves the pressure field calculations and the accuracy of the flow relative to directional permeability differences