Appropriate Choice of Average Pressure for Upscaling Relative Permeability in Dynamic Flow Conditions
Jan Martin Nordbotten, J. P. Nogues, Michael A. Celia · SPE Journal · 2009
Summary A new macroscale pressure definition is investigated through a series of upscaling calculations for two-phase flow in porous media. This definition is taken from previous theoretical work by the authors and aims at correcting for systematic subscale heterogeneities including those generated by nonlinear dependencies on (heterogeneous) saturation distributionsTraditional intrinsic phase- averaged pressure leads to nonmonotone and multivalued upscaled constitutive functions (e.g., discontinuous upscaled-relative-per- meabilities exceeding unity). Using both analytical and numerical calculations, the new macroscale pressure definition is shown to lead to better-behaved upscaled functions.