Coarse-graining of CFD-DEM for simulation of sand production in the modified cohesive contact model

Abstract: Sand production is an important issue for many hydrocarbon recovery applications in unconsolidated reservoirs. The model using the Computational Fluid Dynamics coupled with Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) can capture micro-scale features of sand transport problems. In this study, a coarse-graining approach of 3D CFD-DEM model is developed for the sand production phenomenon using the sample based on the particle size distribution (PSD) from the Kazakhstan reservoir field. The derivation of scaling from a fine to a coarse model is presented rigorously. The original (fine scale) model is validated to the laboratory results including the sand production rate. The results of the original model is compared to the SSW and SSP coarse-gained models. The SSW model results agrees with the result of the sand production rate for the original system. We also observe a good match of the fluid velocity streamline and the produced particle distribution between the original and the coarse models. The speedup of the coarse model is up to 9.4 in the parallelized coarse-grained model.