An improved IMPES method for two-phase flow in porous media

In this paper we develop and numerically study an improved IMPES method for solving a partial differential coupled system for two-phase flow in a three-dimensional porous medium. This improved method utilizes an adaptive control strategy on the choice of a time step for saturation and takes a much larger time step for pressure than for the saturation. Through a stability analysis and a comparison with a simultaneous solution method, we show that this improved IMPES method is effective and efficient for the numerical simulation of two-phase flow and it is capable of solving two-phase coning problems.