Influence of Media Properties on Fluid Flow in Faulted and Fractured Anisotropic Media: A Study Using a Modified Flux-Vector-Based Green Element Method

This article illustrates the use of the modified ‘q-based’ GEM for complex geological problems in anisotropic media involving faults/fractures, by adopting various values of the permeability for both the faults/fractures and the media. The bulk permeabilities are compared and illustrated for different cases. Examples based on generating randomly positioned faults for which the number of faults can vary, but the sum of their lengths is fixed, are investigated. Situations are presented for a number of different total fault lengths and for various physical properties of the faults within a fixed total fault length. For some of the cases, particle traces are shown to better illustrate the behaviour of the flow.