HR: 0800h
AN: H11D-1287    [Abstracts]
TI: Optimization Based Upscaling of Hydrogeological Properties for Flow and Transport Simulation
AU: * Twarakavi, N
EM: ffnkt@uaf.edu
AF: University of Alaska-Fairbanks, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775 United States
AU: Misra, D
EM: ffdm1@uaf.edu
AF: University of Alaska-Fairbanks, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775 United States
AU: Bandopadhyay, S
EM: ffs0b1@uaf.edu
AF: University of Alaska-Fairbanks, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775 United States
AB: Heterogeneity is one of the main characteristics associated with many variables in nature. It is also one of the most difficult aspects in modeling flow in porous media. One of the questions that commonly arise in fluid flow problems is how to treat heterogeneity in large-scale models. In some cases, one is more interested at studying variables at larger scales than in accurate reproduction of behavior at local scale. For that purpose, it is important to find equivalent parameters, that is, those which reproduce the effective behavior of the system discretized at a certain scale. The problem of finding equivalent parameters at larger spatial scales is termed upscaling, because it involves increasing the size of the domain over which they are defined. Despite recent progress in enhancing computational capabilities, methods and tools, one needs to use special techniques in order to use larger grid blocks while compensating for variations in geological properties at any scale smaller than the grid size. It is often desirable to reduce the errors incurred due to coarser spatial discretization by creating optimal upscaled estimates of hydrogeological properties such as permeability. In this paper, we introduced a novel concept of upscaling that uses a support-vector machine inspired approach to optimize upscaling of hydrogeological properties for flow and transport simulations. The optimization based approach embraces certain acceptable error intrinsically in the model structure to optimize the upscaling of hydrogeological properties necessary for flow and transport simulations. The developed optimization based approach for upscaling is compared with other contemporary methods for their effectiveness in different saturated flow and transport scenarios under conditions of varying hydrogeology.
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1839 Hydrologic scaling
DE: 1847 Modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005