Journal of the Korean Society of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineers ISSN:2288-0291(Print) 2288-2790(Online) 한국자원공학회지

Boundary element method has been successfully applied to fluid flow problems in homogeneous porous media, owes its existence of the free-space Green\'s function. However it cannot be applied to the flow problems in heterogeneous media, since there is no such solution. In order to overcome this difficulty, the perturbation method in which the governing equation is decomposed to various order of perturbation equations, was adopted in the developed boundary element model. The model is verified and examined for simplified heterogeneous systems. In a reservoir of functionally varying permeability, the pressure behavior of this model was compared with the corresponding analytical solutions and the results of matches were found to be excellent. In case of heterogeneous reservoir with geostatistically generated permeability field, it was observed that inter-well heterogeneities were effectively and efficiently described in the pressure responses.