Explicit Representation of Flow in a Fractured Porous Medium with Boundary Fitted Coordinates

The accuracy of representing flow in a fractured rock system depends on the ability to describe precisely the fracture geometry in terms of width, orientation and length. Such a detailed representation requires special numerical gridding techniques. In this paper we describe a new boundary fitted coordinate system in which the complex fracture and matrix shapes are transformed into a simple rectangular system in 2-D. Thus the problem of solving the flow equations in the physical plane is converted to two problems: (i) Calculating the transformation factors. (ii) Solving the flow equations in the transformed plane.