Control and optimzation of sub-surface flow

Controlling the flow of fluids (e.g. water, oil, natural gas or CO2) in subsurface porous media is a technical process with many mathematical challenges. The underlying physics can be described with coupled nearly-elliptic and nearly-hyperbolic nonlinear partial differential equations, which require the aid of large-scale numerical simulation. The strongly heterogeneous nature of subsurface rock leads to strong spatial variations in the coefficients. Moreover, the limited accessibility of the underground leads to very large uncertainties in those coefficients and severely limits the amount of control over the dynamic variables. In this talk I will address related system-theoretical aspects, reduced-order modeling techniques, and adjoint-based optimization methods.Geoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience