GEOSX: A Multiphysics, Multilevel Simulator Designed for Exascale Computing

Abstract

Evaluating large basin-scale formations for CO2 sequestration is one of the most important challenges for our industry. The technical complexity and the quantification of risks associated with these operations call for new reservoir engineering and reservoir simulation tools. The impact of multiple coupled physical phenomena, the century timescale, and basin-sized models in these operations force us to completely take apart and revisit the numerical backbone of existing simulation tools. We need a reservoir simulation tool designed for scalability and portability on high-performance computing architectures. To achieve this, we are proposing a new, open-source, multiphysics, and multilevel physics simulation tool called GEOSX. This tool is jointly created by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University, and Total. It is designed for scalability on multiple CPUs and multiple GPUs and offers a suite of physical solvers that can be extended easily while achieving a balance between performance and portability. GEOSX is initially targeting multiphysics simulations with coupled geomechanics, flow, and transport mechanics but with its open architecture, it allows access to high-performance physical solvers as building blocks of other multiphysics problems and provides users with a suite of tools for numerical optimization across platforms. In this paper, we introduce GEOSX, expose its fundamental architecture principles, and show an example of geological sequestration of CO2 modeling on real data. We demonstrate our ability to simulate fluid and rock poromechanical interactions over long periods and basin-scale dimensions. GEOSX demonstrates its usefulness for such complex and large problems and proves to be scalable and portable across multiple high-performance systems.