A Topologically-based Framework for Three-dimensional Basin Modeling

Three-dimensional basin-wide simulation of generation, migration and accumulation of hydrocarbons has vast potential as an uncertainty and risk assessment tool in petroleum exploration. In order to fulfill this potential, several challenges have to be addressed including the modeling of the evolution of complex geological structures such as salt diapirs and fault motion. In this paper, we describe a novel architecture that we have designed and implemented which specifically addresses technical challenges such as 3-D representation of geological models, meshing, parallel computing, and visualization of the massive amount of data involved in these simulations. The core of this architecture is a 3-D topological framework for the representation of evolving geological structures that enables numerical simulation of geological processes undergoing large deformations within sedimentary basin and lithosphere. In this framework, the topology (or informally, connectivity) is separated from the geometry of the geological models, making it possible to update the geometry without altering the model topology. A mesh is treated as a possible realization of the geometric model and hence as an attribute of the topology. This architecture greatly simplifies the automatic meshing and re-meshing associated with large deformations such as those associated with the formation and evolution of salt diapirs. In addition, this architecture was designed to consider the geometry of geological elements in the partitioning of the computational domain and, thus, it is suitable to the solution of the partial differential equations in parallel. This is beneficial because of the large computational resources required to solve numerically the equations governing heat and fluid transport processes within sediments.