Numerical Simulation of Multiphase Flows in Porous Media

怀俄明大学数学系将购买专门用于支持数学科学研究的计算机设备。该设备将用于几个研究项目，特别是：三相多孔介质流动的数值模拟，此类流动的放大问题的研究，非线性守恒定律的粒子跟踪方案的开发以及可应用于它们的并行自适应多尺度有限元方法。这些项目旨在推进油藏和含水层等多孔介质中流体流动的建模和模拟。他们将探索新的计算算法，包括顺序和并行计算机，复杂流体物理的结合，并最终将这些方法应用于已经在怀俄明州和美国其他地方使用的提高石油采收率技术的研究。因此，由于怀俄明州集中了天然气、煤炭和石油等自然资源，这些项目将对该州产生巨大的社会影响，并最终对美国经济产生影响。在对当今世界经济高度重要的应用计算科学领域保持其领导地位。在不同的规模上，这些项目跨越了几个学科，并在其学术计划中被调整为怀俄明大学跨学科计算科学的使命。数学系、统计学系、化学与石油工程系、化学系、计算机科学系、提高石油采收率研究所和能源学院之间现有的研究联系将得到促进，并将吸引现有专业的更多学生。该项目与一项正在进行的教育计划紧密相连，该计划旨在发展计算科学的本科和研究生课程，该课程将通过上述一些部门作为辅修课程提供。这门辅修课程已经被文学院数学系批准，重点是培养学生在高性能计算及其在复杂物理研究中的应用，预计今年秋季将有第一批本科生。其他院系和研究生项目预计将在未来几年内逐步跟进。

The Department of Mathematics at the University of Wyoming will purchasecomputer equipment which will be dedicated to the support of research inthe mathematical sciences. The equipment will be used for severalresearch projects, including in particular: the numerical simulation ofthree-phase porous-media flows, the investigation of the the scale-upproblem for such flows, the development of particle tracking schemes fornonlinear conservation laws and of parallel adaptive multi-scale finiteelement methods that can be applied to them. The projects aimat advancing the state-of-the-art in modeling and simulation of fluidflow in porous media such as oil reservoirs and aquifers. They willexplore new computational algorithms, both for sequential and parallelcomputers, the incorporation of complex fluid physics, and eventuallywill apply these methods to the study of enhanced oil recoverytechniques which are already used in the state of Wyoming as well aselsewhere in the United States. Thus, the projects will have a largesocial impact on the state of Wyoming, due to its concentration ofnatural resources in gas, coal and oil reservoirs, and ultimately on theU.S. maintaining its leadership role in applied computational science ina field of high importance to today's world economy. On a differentscale, the projects span several disciplines and are tuned to theUniversity of Wyoming mission of interdisciplinary computational sciencein its academic plan. Existing research links between the Departments ofMathematics, Statistics, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Chemistry,Computer Science, as well as the Institute for Enhanced Oil Recovery andthe School for Energy Resources will be stimulated, and will result inattracting additional students in the existing programs. The project iscoupled tightly with an on-going education plan aimed at developing bothan undergraduate and a graduate curriculum in Computational Science, tobe offered through some of the above departments above as a minor. Thisminor has already been approved at the College of Arts level for theMathematics Department where the emphasis will be on training studentsin high-performance computing and its use in the study of complexphysics, with first undergraduate students expected this Fall. Otherdepartments and the graduate program are expected to follow graduallyover the next couple of years.