MASS-CONSERVING FRONT TRACKING FOR MISCIBLE 2-PHASE FLOW

A critical analysis of the mass conservation properties of the jump di scontinuity propagating algorithms in the front-tracking method of Gli mm et al, is performed in the context of miscible, two-phase, incompre ssible flow in porous media. These algorithms do not enforce the conse rvation of mass properties of the hyperbolic system on any grid of fin ite discretization size, For the curve propagation algorithm, which is the core of the suite of discontinuity movement algorithms, we show t hat mass conservation errors vanish linearly with maximum mesh size of tile moving grids. We present new curve propagation and redistributio n algorithms which conserve mass for any grid of finite spacing. Analo gously mass-conserving untangling routines have also been developed. W e investigate the performance of these new algorithms for diagonal fiv e-spot computations.