The aim of this Faraday Partnership project is to discover and analyse numerical methods that are as insensitive as possible to grid quality. Novel discretisations of elliptic, hyperbolic and parabolic partial differential equations will be studied to find methods that are stable and convergent for grids that satisfy only the volume bounding property. This work will enable more sophisticated interpretation of a wide range of physical measurements for oil exploration and better design and operation of oil recovery systems that require simulation of flow through complex geological formations.

Project staff and support

Pantelis Kotzonis (Postgraduate Faraday Associate, University of Oxford)
Andy Wathen (Academic supervisor, University of Oxford)
Chris Farmer (Industrial supervisor, Schlumberger)
Tim Boxer (Technology Translator, Smith Institute)

This project is being carried out at the University of Oxford, in conjunction with Schlumberger. It is supported by an EPSRC industrial CASE award, made available through the Faraday Partnership for Industrial Mathematics. Start date: October 2004; duration: 3 years.