Advances in numerical algorithms and methods in computational geosciences with modeling characteristics of multiple physical and chemical processes

This paper aims to provide a brief introduction to recent advances in numerical algorithms and methods in the emerging computational geoscience filed with general simulation characteristics of modeling multiple chemical and physical processes that take place in ore-generating systems within the Earth’s crust. Due to significant differences between Earth systems and engineering systems, the existing numerical algorithms and methods, which are designed for simulating realistic problems in the engineering fields, may not be straightforwardly used to simulate ore-generating problems without significant improvements. Thus, extensive and systematic studies have been conducted, in recent years, to develop new numerical algorithms and methods for simulating different aspects of ore-generating problems. Not only can the outcomes of these studies provide new simulation tools for better understanding the controlled dynamic mechanisms that take place in ore-generating systems, but also they have enriched the research contents of computational mechanics in the broad sense.

[1]  Alison Ord,et al.  A numerical study of pore‐fluid, thermal and mass flow in fluid‐saturated porous rock basins , 1999 .

[2]  Alison Ord,et al.  Theoretical and numerical analyses of chemical‐dissolution front instability in fluid‐saturated porous rocks , 2008 .

[3]  Yao Liu,et al.  Numerical modeling of pore-fluid flow and heat transfer in the Fushan iron ore district, Hebei, China: Implications for hydrothermal mineralization , 2014 .

[4]  Liangming Liu,et al.  Particle simulation of spontaneous crack generation problems in large‐scale quasi‐static systems , 2007 .

[5]  B. Hobbs,et al.  Finite element modeling of fluid–rock interaction problems in pore-fluid saturated hydrothermal/sedimentary basins , 2001 .

[6]  Klaus Regenauer-Lieb,et al.  From characterisation of pore-structures to simulations of pore-scale fluid flow and the upscaling of permeability using microtomography: A case study of heterogeneous carbonates , 2014 .

[7]  Alison Ord,et al.  Computer simulations of coupled problems in geological and geochemical systems , 2002 .

[8]  T. Sun,et al.  Epigenetic genesis and magmatic intrusion's control on the Dongguashan stratabound Cu–Au deposit, Tongling, China: Evidence from field geology and numerical modeling , 2014 .

[9]  D. Bernard,et al.  Natural convection in a porous layer bounded by impervious domains: from numerical approaches to experimental realization , 1999 .

[10]  B. Hobbs,et al.  Morphological evolution of three‐dimensional chemical dissolution front in fluid‐saturated porous media: a numerical simulation approach , 2008 .

[11]  Alison Ord,et al.  Convective and Advective Heat Transfer in Geological Systems , 2008 .

[12]  Ilya Prigogine,et al.  From Being To Becoming , 1980 .

[13]  Alison Ord,et al.  Mineral precipitation associated with vertical fault zones: the interaction of solute advection, diffusion and chemical kinetics , 2007 .

[14]  D. Hoff,et al.  Reactive Infiltration Instabilities , 1986 .

[15]  Alison Ord,et al.  Numerical modelling of fluids mixing, heat transfer and non‐equilibrium redox chemical reactions in fluid‐saturated porous rocks , 2006 .

[16]  Alison Ord,et al.  Phenomenological modelling of crack generation in brittle crustal rocks using the particle simulation method , 2007 .

[17]  P. Gow,et al.  Copper‐gold mineralisation in New Guinea: Numerical modelling of collision, fluid flow and intrusion‐related hydrothermal systems , 2002 .

[18]  Huilin Xing,et al.  Three-dimensional finite element simulation of large-scale nonlinear contact friction problems in deformable rocks , 2008 .

[19]  H. Xing,et al.  A coupled lattice Boltzmann model for simulating reactive transport in CO2 injection , 2014 .

[20]  Anirban Das,et al.  Modeling geochemical datasets for source apportionment: Comparison of least square regression and inversion approaches , 2014 .

[21]  J. Almeida,et al.  Managing borehole samples of unequal lengths to construct a high-resolution mining model of mineral grades zoned by geological units , 2013 .

[22]  Jie Liu,et al.  Reactive transport modeling of thorium in a cloud computing environment , 2014 .

[23]  Zenghua Li,et al.  Numerical modeling of hydrocarbon generation in the Douglas Formation of the Athabasca basin (Canada) and implications for unconformity-related uranium mineralization , 2014 .

[24]  H. Xing Finite element simulation of transient geothermal flow in extremely heterogeneous fractured porous media , 2014 .

[25]  Lynn B. Reid,et al.  Some fundamental issues in computational hydrodynamics of mineralization: A review , 2012 .

[26]  P. Ortoleva,et al.  Numerical modeling of reaction‐induced cavities in a porous rock , 2000 .

[27]  L. Reid,et al.  A porosity-gradient replacement approach for computational simulation of chemical-dissolution front propagation in fluid-saturated porous media including pore-fluid compressibility , 2012, Computational Geosciences.

[28]  Yanhua Zhang,et al.  Numerical modelling of orogenic processes and gold mineralisation in the southeastern part of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia , 2002 .

[29]  Chongbin Zhao,et al.  Finite element modelling of temperature gradient driven rock alteration and mineralization in porous rock masses , 1998 .

[30]  Salih Muhammad Awadh,et al.  Geochemical exploration using surveys of spring water, hydrocarbon and gas seepage, and geobotany for determining the surface extension of Abu-Jir Fault Zone in Iraq: A new way for determining geometrical shapes of computational simulation models , 2013 .

[31]  Philippe Montarnal,et al.  Impact of spatial heterogeneities on oxygen consumption in sediments: Experimental observations and 2D numerical modeling , 2012 .

[32]  Jianwen Yang,et al.  Effect of graphite zone in the formation of unconformity-related uranium deposits: Insights from reactive mass transport modeling , 2014 .

[33]  Stuart W. Bull,et al.  Basin-Scale Numerical Modeling to Test the Role of Buoyancy-Driven Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer in the Formation of Stratiform Zn-Pb-Ag Deposits in the Northern Mount Isa Basin , 2006 .

[34]  An equivalent algorithm for simulating thermal effects of magma intrusion problems in porous rocks , 2003 .

[35]  B. McInnes,et al.  Numerical modeling of magmatic–hydrothermal systems constrained by U–Th–Pb–He time–temperature histories , 2009 .

[36]  Yan Peng,et al.  Numerical modeling for the combined effects of two-phase flow, deformation, gas diffusion and CO2 sorption on caprock sealing efficiency , 2014 .

[37]  Keyu Liu,et al.  Forward stratigraphic modelling of the shallow-water delta system in the Poyang Lake, southern China , 2014 .

[38]  B. Hobbs,et al.  An upscale theory of particle simulation for two‐dimensional quasi‐static problems , 2007 .

[39]  A. Bannari,et al.  Assessment of soil contamination around an abandoned mine in a semi-arid environment using geochemistry and geostatistics: Pre-work of geochemical process modeling with numerical models , 2013 .

[40]  Enrique Merino,et al.  Geochemical Self-Organization II; the Reactive-Infiltration Instability , 1987, American Journal of Science.

[41]  J. C. Jaeger,et al.  Conduction of Heat in Solids , 1952 .

[42]  G. Chae,et al.  Geochemical modeling of CO2–water–rock interactions for two different hydrochemical types of CO2-rich springs in Kangwon District, Korea , 2014 .

[43]  T. Sun,et al.  Delineating the complexity of Cu-Mo mineralization in a porphyry intrusion by computational and fractal modeling: A case study of the Chehugou deposit in the Chifeng district, Inner Mongolia, China , 2014 .

[44]  A. D. Solomon,et al.  Mathematical Modeling Of Melting And Freezing Processes , 1992 .

[45]  E. Palm,et al.  Modelling of thermal convection in sedimentary basins and its relevance to diagenetic reactions , 1988 .

[46]  Chongbin Zhao,et al.  Fluids in geological processes — The present state and future outlook , 2010 .

[47]  B. Hobbs,et al.  Modeling of ore-forming and geoenvironmental systems: Roles of fluid flow and chemical reaction processes , 2014 .

[48]  G. Levresse,et al.  Geochemistry and mineralogy of mine-waste material from a “skarn-type” deposit in central Mexico: Modeling geochemical controls of metals in the surface environment , 2014 .

[49]  Alison Ord,et al.  Numerical modelling of chemical effects of magma solidification problems in porous rocks , 2005 .

[50]  B. Finlayson Book reviewMathematical Modelling of Melting and Freezing Processes. : By Vasilious Alexiades A. D. Solomon. Hemisphere, Washington, DC, 1993 ISBN 1-56032-125-3, 323 pp., £35. , 1994 .

[51]  Chongbin Zhao,et al.  Finite element analysis of steady-state natural convection problems in fluid-saturated porous media heated from below , 1997 .

[52]  B. Hobbs,et al.  Effects of medium thermoelasticity on high Rayleigh number steady-state heat transfer and mineralization in deformable fluid-saturated porous media heated from below , 1999 .

[53]  Christoph Clauser,et al.  Coupled Process Models as a Tool for Analysing Hydrothermal Systems , 2009 .

[54]  B. Hobbs,et al.  Finite element analysis of heat transfer and mineralization in layered hydrothermal systems with upward throughflow , 2000 .

[55]  Alison Ord,et al.  Fundamentals of Computational Geoscience: Numerical Methods and Algorithms , 2009 .

[56]  Yanhua Zhang,et al.  Application of coupled deformation, fluid flow, thermal and chemical modelling to predictive mineral exploration , 2000 .

[57]  Jianwen Yang,et al.  Three-dimensional numerical modeling of salinity variations in driving basin-scale ore-forming fluid flow: Example from Mount Isa Basin, northern Australia , 2010 .

[58]  Effects of mechanical dispersion on the morphological evolution of a chemical dissolution front in a fluid-saturated porous medium , 2009 .

[59]  Guanhong Feng,et al.  On fluid–rock chemical interaction in CO2-based geothermal systems , 2014 .

[60]  Robert G. Jeffrey,et al.  Role of overpressurized fluid and fluid-driven fractures in forming fracture networks , 2014 .

[61]  Suh-Yuh Yang,et al.  Effect of permeability–porosity functions on simulated morphological evolution of a chemical dissolution front , 2014 .

[62]  Chongbin Zhao,et al.  Finite element modeling of pore-fluid flow in the Dachang ore district, Guangxi, China: Implications for hydrothermal mineralization , 2011 .

[63]  A. Bejan,et al.  Convection in Porous Media , 1992 .

[64]  G. Chi,et al.  An overview of hydrodynamic studies of mineralization , 2011 .

[65]  Alison Ord,et al.  Particle simulation of spontaneous crack generation associated with the laccolithic type of magma intrusion processes , 2008 .

[66]  Klaus Gessner,et al.  Numerical investigation of the effect of heterogeneous permeability distributions on free convection in the hydrothermal system at Mount Isa, Australia , 2006 .

[67]  Yanhua Zhang,et al.  Geodynamic modelling of the Century deposit, Mt Isa Province, Queensland , 2002 .

[68]  Yanxin Zhang,et al.  Study on the transformation mechanism of nitrate in a loose-pore geothermal reservoir: Experimental results and numerical simulations , 2014 .