Biosketch

Anna Suzuki is an associate professor in the Institute of Fluid Science (IFS) at Tohoku University. She graduated from Mechanical Engineering and completed Master’s and Doctor’s degrees in Environmental Studies at Tohoku University. After receiving her Ph.D. in 2014, and she was a postdoctoral researcher in Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University between 2014 and 2016. She was a tenure-track assistant professor for five years in the IFS and became the current position in November 2021. Her research mainly focuses on geothermal reservoir modeling. She works on mathematical modeling of fluid and heat flows, numerical simulations, and structure-controlled flow experiments. Recently, she is also working on co-creation with citizens and social marketing to use local energy resources.

Introduction of the Lecture

Models representing complex fracture structures in a large number of parameters have high uncertainty, but data that can be measured from reservoirs are limited in estimating the structures. In this study, we focus on interwell structures and flow characteristics in fractured rocks. Topological data analysis was applied to evaluate and detect structures of flow paths from the image data. We could estimate the flow characteristics based on the new topological descriptions. We also estimated the structure of fractured rock masses using thermal responses and particle-tracer rsposes. Flow experiments were conducted with 3D-printed fracture models, and we evaluated each method of interwell structures.