14.8.3 Streamlines

Streamlines are used in a reservoir engineering context to visualize the directions of fluid flow within a reservoir. Streamlines are static geometric trajectories in space that are based upon fluid velocities at a specified time. The velocities may be obtained from the flow of a fluid phase, e.g., water, oil, gas, or the sum of phases, or the flow of components, e.g., CO2 or CH4, or they may describe the flow of another attribute, e.g., temperature and thermal flux. Streamlines differ from the "streaklines" that describe the physical trajectories of particles in a time-varying velocity field.