Lanczos method for the solution of groundwater flow in discretely fractured porous media

One of the more advanced approaches for simulating groundwater flow in fractured porous media is the discrete-fracture approach. This approach is limited by the large computational overheads associated with traditional modeling methods. In this work, we apply the Lanczos reduction method to the modeling of groundwater flow in fractured porous media using the discrete-fracture approach. The Lanczos reduction method reduces a finite element equation system to a much smaller tridiagonal system of first-order differential equations. The reduced system can be solved by a standard tridiagonal algorithm with little computational effort. Because solving the reduced system is more efficient compared to solving the original system, the simulation of groundwater flow in discretely fractured media using the reduction method is very efficient. The proposed method is especially suitable for the problem of large-scale and long-term simulation. In this paper, we develop an iterative version of Lanczos algorithm, in which the preconditioned conjugate gradient solver based on ORTHOMIN acceleration is employed within the Lanczos reduction process. Additional efficiency for the Lanczos method is achieved by applying an eigenvalue shift technique. The “shift” method can improve the Lanczos system convergence, by requiring fewer modes to achieve the same level of accuracy over the unshifted case. The developed model is verified by comparison with dual-porosity approach. The efficiency and accuracy of the method are demonstrated on a field-scale problem and compared to the performance of classic time marching method using an iterative solver on the original system. In spite of the advances, more theoretical work needs to be carried out to determine the optimal value of the shift before computations are actually carried out.