Analytical Solution for 2D Inter-Well Porous Flow in a Rectangular Reservoir

• Main Authors: Junfeng Ding, Shimin Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-04-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: analytical solution; inter-well porous flow; Laplace equation; method of mirror images; Euler transform
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/8/4/586

Inter-well fluid flows through porous media are commonly encountered in the production of groundwater, oil, and geothermal energy. In this paper, inter-well porous flow inside a rectangular reservoir is solved based on the complex variable function theory combined with the method of mirror images. In order to derive the solution analytically, the inter-well flow is modeled as a 2D flow in a homogenous and isotropic porous medium. The resulted exact analytical solution takes the form of an infinite series, but it can be truncated to give high accuracy approximation. In terms of nine cases of inter-well porous flow associated with enhanced geothermal systems, the applications of the obtained analytical solution are demonstrated, and the convergence properties of the truncated series are investigated. It is shown that the convergent rate of the truncated series increases with the symmetric level of well distribution inside the reservoir, and the adoption of Euler transform significantly accelerates the convergence of alternating series cases associated with asymmetric well distribution. In principle, the analytical solution proposed in this paper can be applied to other scientific and engineering fields, as long as the involved problem is governed by 2D Laplace equation in a rectangular domain and subject to similar source/sink and boundary conditions, i.e., isolated point sources/sinks and uniform Dirichlet or homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions.