Published: Sept. 20, 2011

Particle Tracking Methods

Michael Brutz

Applied MathematicsUniversity of Colorado Boulder

Date and time: 

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - 3:45pm

Abstract: 

Particle tracking methods are frequently used to model contaminant transport through fractured media as they can readily deal with complicated fracture networks without the need to generate any sort of mesh and are often embarrassingly parallel when dealing with such problems. The underlying idea behind the methods is to think of the distribution of a contaminant as a probability density function, and to generate a set of random variables from this pdf. By making use of the Fokker-Planck equation, one can then time evolve the locations of these random variables and later recover the contaminant distribution by simply making a histogram of them. Typically, time step sizes are limited by how close a particle lies to an interface between a porous rock matrix and an open fracture, and can be quite small when a particle is contained in a thin fracture. This talk will outline an augmentation to a standard particle tracking method where substantially larger time steps can be made when particles enter long straight cracks by taking advantage of the simplified geometry encountered there.