Prediction of Water Vapor Movement through Waste Rock

Evaporative losses from the surface of barren waste rock piles in arid environments occur as a result of water vapor diffusion. Water vapor diffusion is accompanied by adsorption of water vapor. A review of the literature found that adsorption of water vapor is commonly described as a sigmoidal function of suction with a predominant linear portion when plotted against the log of suction. Laboratory column tests were conducted with glass beads and waste rock to study water vapor diffusion. A monitoring system was developed for measuring relative humidity and temperature through the column. Water vapor fluxes and relative humidity profiles through the column were measured under steady-state conditions to establish the method of estimating the water vapor diffusion coefficient. Transient water vapor fluxes and relative humidity profiles were measured and a numerical model was developed to simulate the laboratory observations. The numerical model demonstrated the importance of water sorption in controlling the transient water vapor flux. Sorption described as a log–linear function of suction gave reasonable results for the numerical modeling of the glass beads and waste rock.     

Analysis of Gravity Dam on a Complicated Rock Foundation Using an Adaptive Block Element Method

In this Technical Note, the adaptive block element method of rock masses is formulated, in which the elastoplastic characteristics of both rock blocks and discontinuities are taken into account. The concept of an overlay element is illustrated first; then the displacement fields of rock blocks are expressed as functions of so-called general degree of freedoms using the shape functions of the hierarchical finite element method; the governing equations of the rock block system are deduced on the basis of the virtual work principle; and the p-version adaptive algorithm based on the energy norm error estimation of each block element is proposed. The method is applied to the deformation and stability study of a gravity dam, and the parallel laboratory physical test is used to check the validity and ability of the method.     

Site Response at Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands, California

A variety of methods are utilized to reinvestigate the physical relationship between the seismic response of Treasure Island (TI) and Yerba Buena Island (YBI) in California. These islands are a soil (TI) and rock (YBI) site pair separated by 2 km. The site pair has been used previously by researchers to identify soil response to earthquake shaking. Linear regime ground motions (MW4.0–MW4.6 and PGA: 0.014–0.017 g) recorded in the TI vertical array indicate a coherent wavefield in the sediments and an incoherence between the rock and sediments. Our analyses show that the greatest change in the wavefield occurred between the rock and soil layers, corresponding to a significant impedance contrast. The waveforms change very little as they propagate through the sediments, indicating that the site response is a cumulative effect of the entire soil structure and not a result of wave propagation within individual soil layers. In order to highlight the complexity of the site response, correlation analysis was used to demonstrate that the rock and soil ground motions were not highly coherent between the two sites. YBI was, therefore, shown to be an inappropriate reference site for TI. One-dimensional (1D) vertical wave propagation and inverse techniques were used to differentiate between 1D site response and more complex site behavior. Both 1D methods (vertical wave propagation and inverse transfer functions) proved incapable of capturing the site response at TI beyond the initial four seconds of motion. Finite difference waveform modeling, based on a two-dimensional velocity structure of the northern San Francisco Bay was needed to explain the linear site response at TI as horizontally propagating surface waves trapped in the bay sediments. A simplified velocity structure for the San Francisco Bay including a single 100 m basin layer (constant shear-wave velocity of 400 m/s) over a 1.5 km/s layer of Franciscan bedrock was able to trap energy in the basin and produce surface waveform ringing similar to that observed in the TI data. Due to surface waves propagating in the San Francisco Bay sediments, any 1D model will not fully characterize site response at TI. All 1D models will fail to produce the late arriving energy observed in the ground motions.     

Estimating Pressure Losses in Interconnected Fracture Systems: Integrated Tensor Approach

A significant number of petroleum reservoirs and almost all geothermal reservoirs are characterized by high in situ stress and fractures, and fractures act as major flow paths for fluids. An integrated tensor model is proposed to solve three tasks: characterization of a heterogeneous fracture network, simulation of fluid flow through a complex system for estimation of the grid-based permeability tensor, and unsteady-state fluid flow simulation for estimation of production and pressure losses. Deformation of the matrix and fractures are solved separately and used to compute their dynamic porosity and permeability. Finite-element methods and boundary element methods are used for numerical modeling. The results of this study show that the proposed model can overcome problems requiring excessive computational resources, flow interactions between the matrix and fracture, and the effect of matrix deformation on fluid flow. Results also show that the integrated tensor model serves as an efficient tool for predicting the effect of stress on fracture deformation and consequent productivity and/or injectivity of naturally fractured reservoirs.     

Plane-Strain Propagation of a Fluid-Driven Crack in a Permeable Rock with Fracture Toughness

A solution to the problem of a plane-strain fluid-driven crack propagation in elastic permeable rock with resistance to fracture is presented. The fracture is driven by injection of an incompressible Newtonian fluid at a constant rate. The solution, restricted to the case of zero lag between the fluid front and the fracture tip, evolves from the early-time regime when the fluid flow takes place mostly inside the crack toward the large-time response when most of the injected fluid is leaking from the crack into the surrounding rock. This transition further depends on a time-invariant partitioning between the energy expanded to overcome the rock fracture toughness and the energy dissipated in the viscous fluid flow in the fracture. A numerical approach is used to compute the solution for the normalized crack length and crack opening and net-fluid pressure profiles as a function of two dimensionless parameters: the leak-off/storage evolution parameter and the toughness/viscosity number. Relation of this solution to the various available asymptotic solutions is discussed. Obtained mapping of the solution onto the problem parametric space has a potential to simplify the tasks of design, modeling, and data inversion for hydraulic fracturing treatments and laboratory experiments.     

Discrete Element Modeling of Strength Properties of Johnson Space Center (JSC-1A) Lunar Regolith Simulant

This paper simulates the three-dimensional axisymmetric triaxial compression of JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant under lunar and terrestrial gravity environments under a wide range of confining pressures and relative densities. To accomplish this, the discrete element method (DEM), using Particle Flow Code In Three-Dimensional (PFC3D) software, was employed. The paper focuses on the peak and the critical state (CS) friction angles, which were predicted in the ranges of 35.4°–82.7° and 31.2°–79.8°, respectively, depending on the specimen density and confining pressure. A significant increase in peak and CS friction angles was predicted at near-zero confining pressure. The DEM results validated an empirical model that relates the peak friction angle with the CS friction angle, relative density, and mean effective stress at the CS. Comparison of DEM results with lunar in situ measurements of friction angle, from Apollo missions and other extraterrestrial laboratory experiments under a microgravity environment, shows a favorable agreement.     

Numerical Simulation on Damage and Failure of Brittle Rocks under Different Confining Pressures

A numerical analysis has been conducted to evaluate the effect of confining pressure on the damage evolution and the fracture process of brittle rock materials by using the rock failure process analysis code (RFPA2D). A fractal dimension D associated with material damage and a damage variable ω are defined to describe the damage process of the specimen subjected to tensile or compressive load. We find that the spatial distribution of microfractures is fractal and has very good statistical self-similarity in the specimen under different confined conditions. The fractal dimension D increases progressively with loading. Meanwhile, the damage variable ω develops from 0 to 1, and the specimen failure is characterized by the critical damage variable ωc with 0.4 ? ωc ? 0.8. The initial damage is delayed by the confining pressure. The confining pressure plays an important role in the mode of rock failure in numerical simulations. The tensile microfractures dominate near the brittle splitting of the specimens under no and low confining pressure. Conversely, a few tensile microfractures appear in the ductile shear failures of the specimens under immediate or high confining pressures. The tensile microfractures run through all failure processes in the specimen under uniaxial tensile loading. The stress-strain curves are also obtained in numerical simulation. The results show that the specimen is strengthed by the confinement and fails according to Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion.     

Response Analysis of Field-Scale Fully Grouted Standard Cable Bolts Using a Coupled ANN–FDM Approach

This paper presents a coupled approach using an artificial neural network (ANN) and the finite difference method (FDM) that has been developed to predict the distribution of axial load along fully grouted standard cable bolts in the field using laboratory pullout test data. A back-propagation training algorithm was used in ANN to determine axial loads in the cables tested in the laboratory. The ANN component of the computational model was trained using two different types of data sets. At first, the ANN was trained to predict the axial loads in a series of short cables grouted with Portland cement at a specific water-to-cement ratio and subjected to different radial confining stiffness values. Next, the ANN model was trained for an expanded case to include the influence of lateral confining stress on the distribution of axial load in the cable reinforcement. Finally, the ANN model was implemented into a widely used, FDM-based geotechnical software (FLAC). The accuracy of the ANN–FDM model is demonstrated in this paper against measured data from laboratory and field tests. The analysis approach introduced in this study is a valuable computational tool that can be used to determine the axial load distribution in long standard cable bolts, which are commonly installed to stabilize rock masses in various geotechnical, transportation, and mining applications.     

In Situ Test on Cooling Effectiveness of Air Convection Embankment with Crushed Rock Slope Protection in Permafrost Regions

An experimental air convection embankment (ACE) was constructed in Beiluhe on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during 2001–2003, using coarse (5–8 and 40–50 cm), poorly graded crushed rock fill material on the slope of embankment with thick ground ice permafrost foundation, which should be called the air convection embankment with crushed rock slope protection (ACE–CRSP). The highly permeable ACE–CRSP installation was designed to test the cooling effectiveness of ACE–CRSP concept in an actual railway project. Ground temperature data were collected from test sections on the railway with thermistor sensor strings. The results showed that the mean ground temperature under the layer of the crushed rock with coarse particle diameter of 40–50 cm was lower than that under one with finer particle diameter of 5–8 cm, and the fluctuating range of temperature under the former was bigger than that under the latter. It was obvious that the maximum thaw depth was raised under the layer of crushed rock with coarse particle diameter of 40–50 cm, which resulted from the stronger cooling effectiveness of air convection during the winter. The amount of heat exchange also showed that the absorbed cooling energy of the foundation, under the layer of the crushed rock with coarse diameter, was larger than that with finer diameter.So, we believe that the cooling effectiveness of the crushed rock layer with coarse diameter was stronger than that one with finer diameter.     

Conditions for Compaction Band Formation in Porous Rock Using a Two-Yield Surface Model

Compaction bands, a form of localized deformation found in field and laboratory specimens of high porosity rock, consist of planar zones of pure compressional deformation that form perpendicular to maximum compression. Experimentalists report compaction bands and/or shear bands (angled to maximum compression) in high porosity sandstone during a transitional loading regime with multiple active deformation mechanisms. Conditions for localized deformation are determined using a two-yield surface constitutive model and bifurcation theory. The shear yield surface corresponds to a dilatant, frictional mechanism while the cap corresponds to a compactant mechanism. Unlike a single yield surface model, the two-yield surface model predicts both experimentally observed band types for reported values of key material parameters. Observed and predicted shear band angles generally agree. Theory suggests that shear band formation may coincide with activation of the shear yield surface by a previously active cap. If the bulk hardening modulus, k, equals zero (corresponding to localization on the peak or plateau of the mean stress–volume strain curve) compaction band conditions are more favorable than for small positive values of k.