Incompressible flow in porous media with two moving boundaries (Q1103487)

The industrial process considered is production of oil through a horizontal well perforated into an oil-zone which is bounded below by water and bounded above by gas. This process is modelled by a two- dimensional, incompressible, porous-medium flow into a point sink. The interfluid boundaries are then moving boundaries. The conditions at each moving boundary are expressed, with appropriate assumptions, as equations between the fluid potential and the vertical displacement of the boundary. There is one static and one dynamic condition at each boundary. Boundary-fitted orthogonal coordinates are then introduced. The Laplace equation for the vertical displacement and the Poisson equation for the velocity potential, together with the static boundary conditions, can then be solved analytically, in terms of the vertical displacement at each boundary, with time as a parameter. The vertical displacement at each boundary must be calculated at each time-step by solving the equations expressing the dynamic boundary conditions. These are coupled, nonlinear integro-differential equations. The solution is expressed as an infinite trigonometric series, whose coefficients are determined as the solution of an infinite system of ordinary differential equations. Convergence acceleration is applied to this series and hence only the first few terms need to be calculated.