| Abstract |
The recent technical progress made in geo-reservoir engineering in the last 30 years highlights the necessity of obtaining numerical models in thermo-hydro-mechanically (Thm) Coupled situations which are able to meet prediction needs (\what is the operating life of a reservoir ?") And planning needs (\where to drill a new well ?"). Overall, numerical simulations of fractured media with thm couplings still face two major obstacles (Franco and vaccaro, 2014). The rst is the realization of a mesh representing the fracture network. The problem which arises is to mesh objects with one and two dimensions that can be quite small compared to the sample size (E.G. Fault zones of 50 to 100m thick in a geothermal reservoir at the kilometer scale). In addition, the fracture network to mesh may, for example, be contained in a medium whose properties change from one location to another (E.G. If faults are embedded in dI erent geological layers). The second obstacle is the cpu time required to perform a calculation because of the mesh's heaviness and also the lling degree of the tangent matrix to be inverted. In this contribution, the geometry of all fractures is assumed to be perfectly known (Deterministic framework), and new perspectives are proposed about mesh re nement techniques in order to (I) Represent a network of fractures or faults (II) Without leading to excessive growth of the underlying calculation time. The proposed strategy is based on the nite element method but exhibits similarities with meshfree methods since the mesh can be viewed as a set of nodes linked by single connections. At rst, the main aspects of the approach are presented. Afterwards, we present an example of a calculation of a deep geothermal reservoir. As for the temperature eld, the model anticipates that convection loops are initiated in two of the three faults present in the reservoir. |