Fast 2.5D Finite Element Simulations of Borehole Resistivity Measurements

Abstract

We develop a rapid 2.5-dimensional (2.5D) finite element method for simulation of borehole resistivity measurements in transversely isotropic (TI) media. The method combines arbitrary high-order $H^1$ - and $H$ (curl)-conforming spatial discretizations. It solves problems where material properties remain constant along one spatial direction, over which we consider a Fourier series expansion and each Fourier mode is solved independently. We propose a novel a priori method to construct quasi-optimal discretizations in physical and Fourier space. This construction is based on examining the analytical (fundamental) solution of the 2.5D formulation over multiple homogeneous spaces and assuming that some of its properties still hold for the 2.5D problem over a spatially heterogeneous formation. In addition, a simple parallelization scheme over multiple measurement positions provides efficient scalability. Our method yields accurate borehole logging simulations for realistic synthetic examples, delivering simulations of borehole resistivity measurements at a rate faster than 0.05 s per measurement location along the well trajectory on a 96-core computer.