The virtual element method for discrete fracture network simulations

Abstract In this work, an optimization based approach presented in Berrone et al. (2013, 2014) [10–12] for Discrete Fracture Network simulations is coupled with the Virtual Element Method (VEM) for the space discretization of the underlying Darcy law. The great flexibility of the VEM in handling rather general polygonal elements allows, in a natural way, for an effective description of irregular solutions starting from an arbitrary triangulation, which is built independently of the mesh on other fractures. Only partial conformity is in fact obtained with this approach. Numerical results performed on several DFN configurations confirm the viability and efficiency of the resulting method.

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