Multilevel spectral coarsening for graph Laplacian problems with application to reservoir simulation

Abstract: We extend previously developed two-level coarsening procedures for graph Laplacian problems written in a mixed saddle point form to the fully recursive multilevel case. The resulting hierarchy of discretizations gives rise to a hierarchy of upscaled models, in the sense that they provide approximation in the natural norms (in the mixed setting). This property enables us to utilize them in three applications: (i) as an accurate reduced model, (ii) as a tool in multilevel Monte Carlo simulations (in application to finite volume discretizations), and (iii) for providing a sequence of nonlinear operators in FAS (full approximation scheme) for solving nonlinear pressure equations discretized by the conservative two-point flux approximation. We illustrate the potential of the proposed multilevel technique in all three applications on a number of popular benchmark problems used in reservoir simulation.