SPWLA & SPE Technical Seminar - Prof. Shuyu Sun (Tongji University)

Join us for an engaging seminar on Thermodynamically Consistent Numerical Modeling for Multiphase/Multicomponent Flow in Deformable Porous Media by Prof. Shuyu Sun.

Abstract:
Modeling fluid flow in deformable porous media is critical for geophysical and engineering applications such as carbon sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, and subsurface contaminant transport. This talk presents two thermodynamically consistent numerical frameworks tailored to address key challenges in this field: multicomponent gas flow in poroelastic media and immiscible two-phase flow in poro-viscoelastic media. For multicomponent systems, the proposed framework integrates the Maxwell-Stefan-Darcy model for accurate diffusion description, Biot’s poroelasticity theory for solid deformation, and the Peng-Robinson equation of state for thermodynamic consistency. A stabilized discretization strategy, combined with adaptive time-stepping and mixed finite elements (plus discontinuous Galerkin for momentum equations), ensures energy stability, local mass conservation, and strict boundedness of molar densities, which eliminates non-physical solutions. For immiscible two-phase flow, the model leverages fluid and solid free energies to characterize capillarity and skeleton viscoelasticity, rigorously adhering to the second law of thermodynamics through an energy dissipation law. The cell-centered finite difference method on staggered grids, enhanced with upwind strategies and a stabilized iterative splitting algorithm, preserves mass for both fluids and solids while maintaining energy stability. Numerical experiments validate the robustness, efficiency, and physical fidelity of both frameworks, demonstrating their capability to handle heterogeneous media, complex phase interactions, and dynamic fluid-solid coupling. These methods provide reliable tools for simulating real-world processes where thermodynamic consistency and computational stability are paramount.

Bio of Speaker:
Shuyu Sun is a professor and the Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Tongji University. He received a Ph.D. in Computational and Applied Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin in 2003. From 2003 to 2009, he worked at the University of Texas at Austin and Clemson University. In August 2009, he joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as a faculty member in the Earth Science and Engineering program (now the Earth Systems Science and Engineering Program) and in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Science program. In December 2024, he joined Tongji University. In 2025, he was appointed as a Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. He has published more than 400 SCI journal papers, with a total of over 15,000 citations and an H-index of 64 (according to Google Scholar). He has supervised more than 50 master's and doctoral students (20 doctoral students have graduated) and more than 20 postdoctoral researchers. Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Computational Geoscience and serves as an editorial board member for Journal of Computational Physics; he also acted as a lead guest editor for internationally renowned journals including Applied Energy, Applied Thermal Engineering, Fuel, and Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. He is a Council Member of the 9th Council of the Chinese Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CSIAM).

Mark your calendars and join us for this enlightening seminar.

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Co-hosted with: SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) KAUST Student Chapter

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