Recently, a novel distributed quasi-Newton (DQN) derivative-free optimization (DFO) method was developed for generic reservoir-performance optimization problems, including well-location optimization (WLO) and well-control optimization (WCO). DQN is designed to locate multiple local optima of highly nonlinear optimization problems effectively. However, its performance has been neither validated by realistic applications nor compared with other DFO methods. Field-testing results reinforce the auspicious computational attributes of DQN.
Background
An optimization problem is posed as the minimization or maximization of an objective function by modifying the control variables (x) within a search domain. The objective function is a highly nonlinear function of x and may have multiple local optima.
