variavel0=<b>André Gustavo Di Palma Cordovil</b> - andredip@dep.fem.unicamp.br Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Eliana Luci Ligero</b> - eligero@dep.fem.unicamp.br Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Denis José Schiozer</b> - denis@dep.fem.unicamp.br niversidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Abstract.</b> The numerical simulation of petroleum reservoirs is a very important and useful tool supporting strategic decisions related to the petroleum field development. A large number of grid blocks can be reach when modeling actual fields. In order to allow the simulation with large number of grid blocks, the upscaling technique become a useful tool with wide application possibility. Another aspect associated to the numerical simulation of reservoir is the evaluation methodology of the linear system components (residual vector and Jacobian matrix) formed to obtain the primary and the related properties, at each timestep. The grid discretization is optimized. The connection based simulation propose a new methodology based on the verification and definition of the valid connections, by creating proper vectors, only once before the simulation time computational loop instead of perform this task every iteration of all timesteps. This work shows the advantages of the application the connection based simulation on the upscaling technique, aiming the reduction of the information loss when simulating some critical cases, such as grids with cannels, barriers and random distributed petrophysical properties. Four critical cases will be chosen and studied to show the benefits of the upscaling applied on the valid connections vectors.
<b>Keywords.</b> numerical reservoir simulation, connections based simulation, upscaling.