DARTS open-source reservoir simulation framework

Abstract

The open Delft Advanced Research Terra Simulator (open-DARTS) framework is an open-source reservoir simulation software. The open-DARTS focused on energy transition applications, such as geothermal energy production and carbon sequestration. It enables the modeling of compositional thermal flow, coupled with a geomechanical solver based on the Finite Volume discretization and adjoints method for inverse modeling. The open-DARTS supports different grid types (structured, corner-point geometry, and unstructured), discrete fracture networks, contact mechanics, and various thermal-chemical interactions. The recently proposed generic nonlinear formulation supports the most general nonlinear PDEs designed for various energy transition applications. The open-DARTS has been implemented in C++ and Python to optimize hardware utilization while ensuring flexibility. The most computationally expensive part is written in C++ and compiled into libraries, which are subsequently exposed to Python using pybind11. This allows the extension and overriding of C++ functions by user-defined Python code. For example, using only a Python interface, one can adjust a timestep strategy, nonlinear solver, or properties output. Besides, the Python interface of open-DARTS provides straightforward coupling with other Python-based numerical modeling packages, including the meshing, file storage, caching, and visualization modules. The open-DARTS core uses the advantages of C++ language, such as efficient low-level memory management, object-oriented programming, compile-time polymorphism, and parallelization with OpenMP. One of the advantages of open-DARTS is the Operator-Based Linearization (OBL) technique, which can resolve challenges associated with complex physics and reduce the computation time, especially for ensemble-based simulations. We would also like to share our experience on the project, repository, and the development workflow configuration using gitlab.com, including the build system (cmake), handling merge requests, automated testing in CI/CD pipelines, documentation management (gitlab.io), wiki utilization, and release publishing. Additionally, Python’s integration into open-DARTS offers the advantage of straightforward installation via PyPI and simplifies defining requirements for users who prefer to avoid compiling code from source files.