Patent ID: 8350851

Claim:
A method of coarsening a three dimensional grid model having a plurality of cells, each cell having one or more properties associated therewith, the method comprising: iteratively performing, by a computer processor, a first set of operations, the first set of operations including at least one areal coarsening operation, at least one sampling operation, at least one vertical direction coarsening operation, and at least one determining operation, wherein: each successive areal coarsening operation reduces a number of cells in a horizontal sheet while maintaining vertical resolution to provide a successively coarsened grid model; each successive resampling operation populates cells of the successively coarsened grid model with the one or more properties by sampling the one or more properties associated with the initial three dimensional grid model; each vertical direction coarsening operation reduces a number of cells in the vertical direction while maintaining areal resolution to provide a successively coarsened grid model; and each successive determining operation determines whether to continue iteratively performing the first set of operations based on a comparison of one or more characteristics of the successively coarsened grid model with one or more corresponding characteristics of the initial three dimensional grid model; and iteratively performing, by the computer processor and in response to the comparison not being acceptable, a second set of operations, the second set of operations including at least one additional coarsening operation, at least one upscaling operation, and at least one additional determining operation, wherein: each successive additional coarsening operation reduces a number of cells in the grid model to provide an additionally coarsened grid model; each successive upscaling operation populates cells of the additionally coarsened grid model with the one or more properties by upscaling the one or more properties from a prior coarsened grid model; and each successive additional determining operation determines whether to continue iteratively performing the second set of operations based on a second comparison of one or more characteristics of the additionally coarsened grid model with one or more corresponding characteristics of the prior coarsened grid model.