Upscaling of conductivity of heterogeneous formations: General approach and application to isotropic media

The numerical simulation of flow through heterogeneous formations requires the assignment of the conductivity value to each numerical block. The conductivity is subjected to uncertainty and is modeled as a stationary random space function. In this study a methodology is proposed to relate the statistical moments of the block conductivity to the given moments of the continuously distributed conductivity and to the size of the numerical blocks. After formulating the necessary conditions to be satisfied by the flow in the upscaled medium, it is found that they are obeyed if the mean and the two-point covariance of the space averaged energy disspation function over numerical elements in the two media, of point value and of upscaled conductivity, are identical. This general approach leads to a systematic upscaling procedure for uniform average flow in an unbounded domain. It yields the statistical moments of upscaled logconductivity that depend only on those of the original one and on the size and shape of the numerical elements.The approach is applied to formations of isotropic heterogeneity and to isotropic partition elements. After a general discussion based on dimensional analysis, the procedure is illustrated by using a first-order approximation in the logconductivity variance. The upscaled logconductivity moments (mean, two-point covariance) are computed for two and three dimensional flows, isotropic heterogeneous media and elements of circular or spherical shape. The asymptotic cases of elements of small size, which preserve the point value conductivity structure on one hand, and of large blocks for which the medium can be replaced by one of deterministic effective properties, on the other hand, are analyzed in detail. The results can be used in order to generate the conductivity of numerical elements in Monte Carlo simulations.