• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.157-171
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• 2019

The fracturing by liquid carbon dioxide ($LCO_2$) as a fracking fluid has been an alternative to mitigate the environmental issues often caused by the conventional hydraulic fracking since it facilitates the fluid permeation owing to its low viscosity. This study presents how $LCO_2$ injection influences the breakdown pressure, acoustic emission, and fracture morphology. Three fracturing fluids such as $LCO_2$, water, and oil are injected with different pressurization rate to the synthetic and porous mortar specimens. Also, the shale which has been a major target formation in conventional fracking practices is also tested to examine the failure characteristics. The results show that $LCO_2$ injection induces more tortuous and undulated fractures, and particularly the larger fractures are developed in cases of shale specimen. On the other hand, the relationship between the fracturing fluids and the breakdown pressure shows opposite tendency in the tests of mortar and shale specimens.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.23-32
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• 2016

A single particle crushing test was carried out for recycled aggregates from waste concrete while demolishing various structures. When the recycled aggregates were used for backfill or road subbase materials, load-displacement and crushing characteristics were analyzed. The recycled aggregates with hydrates and aggregates were sorted into 40 mm size (75-40 mm) and 20 mm size (40-20 mm). At initial loading, their irregular surface was closed to and then crushed by loading plate. Such first crushing stage was called 'Surface crushing'. Further loading, some hydrate was crushed and detached from aggregate, and such process repeated several times. This state is called 'hydrate crushing'. The final state is called 'aggregate crushing' in which aggregate crushed and following load suddenly dropped down. As the load increased, such crushing cycle is repeated several times. The shapes of aggregates are round or square, and triangle or long shaped. Depending on their shapes and surface conditions, they crushed in different ways. The 63% of aggregates showed more than 50% load reduction due to aggregate crushing. The 90% load reduction occurred at 15% of aggregates. The 40 mm aggregate crushed at maximum load between 3.05-4.38 kN and 70% of crushed aggregates were less than 20 mm.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.41-53
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• 2009

In order to analyze the influence of particle shape on evolution of particle crushing and characteristic of shear behavior of granular soil, direct shear test was simulated by using DEM (Discrete Element Method). Six particle shapes were generated by clump and cluster model built in PFC (Particle Flow Code). The results of direct shear test for six particle shapes were compared and analyzed with those for circular particle shape. The results of numerical tests showed a good agreement with those of experimental tests, thus the appropriateness of numerical modelling set in this study was proved. As for particle shape, more angular and rougher particle induced larger internal friction angle and more particle crushing than relatively round and smooth particle. When particles were crushed, crushing was concentrated on the shear band adjacent to the shear plane. Finally, it can be concluded that the numerical models suggested in this study can be used extensively for other studies concerning the shear behavior of granular soil including soil crushing.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.193-204
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• 1999

Particle crushing is an important and essential factor in interpreting the strength and deformation properties of granular materials in the case of geotechnical problems related to soil crushability. As a recent field problem, the exploitation of offshore oil reserves in tropical and sub-tropical coastal shelf areas has shown that the behaviour of soils containing carbonates is markedly different from predominantly silica sands. In this study, as a first step in making a mechanical framework of granular materials incorporating the soil crushability, single particle fragmentation tests were carried out on four different types of sands in order to clarify the characteristics of the single particle fragmentation strength as related to soil crushability. The single particle strength was considered with the influence of the particle shapes, the amount of mineral components and the particle sizes. The soil particle strength corresponding $D_{50}$ of soil distribution curve has shown the lower value, the more the carbonate component and the more angular the particle shape.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.39 no.8
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• pp.17-28
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• 2023

Laboratory-scale hydraulic fracturing experiments were conducted on granite specimens at various viscosities and injection rates of the fracturing fluid. A series of cross-sectional computed tomography (CT) images of fractured specimens was obtained via a three-dimensional X-ray CT imaging method. Pixel-level fracture segmentation of the CT images was conducted using a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based Nested U-Net model structure. Compared with traditional image processing methods, the CNN-based model showed a better performance in the extraction of thin and complex fractures. These extracted fractures extracted were reconstructed in three dimensions and morphologically analyzed based on their fracture volume, aperture, tortuosity, and surface roughness. The fracture volume and aperture increased with the increase in viscosity of the fracturing fluid, while the tortuosity and roughness of the fracture surface decreased. The findings also confirmed the anisotropic tortuosity and roughness of the fracture surface. In this study, a CNN-based model was used to perform accurate fracture segmentation, and quantitative analysis of hydraulic stimulated fractures was conducted successfully.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.321-336
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• 2012

The shear behavior at the particle/surface interface such as rock joint can determine the mechanical behavior of whole structure. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms governing its behavior and accurately estimation of the interface strength is essential. In this paper, PFC, a numerical analysis program of discrete element method was used to investigate the effects of the surface roughness crushing on interface strength. The surface roughness was characterized by smooth, intermediate, and rough surface, respectively. Particle shape was classified into one ball model of circular shape and 3 ball model of triangular shape. The surface shape was modelled by wall model of non-crushing surface and ball model of crushing surface. The results showed that as the bonding strength of ball model decreases, lower interface strength is induced. After the surface roughness crushing was occurred, the interface strength tended to converge and higher bonding strength induced lower surface roughness crushing. Higher friction angle was induced in wall model and higher surface roughness induced the higher friction angle. From these findings, it is verified that the surface roughness and surface roughness crushing effect on the particle/surface interface shear behavior.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.8 no.3 s.29
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• pp.105-114
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• 2006

A popular alternative to extend the life of aged pavement is asphalt overlay. However, it has a very serious and inherent shortcoming in deterring a reflection crack. Although joint-rehabilitation and stress-relief techniques have been applied to deter such reflection cracks in aged pavement, the techniques had a limited success only in slowing down the progress of a reflection crack. Rubblization technique rubblizes the concrete pavement slab in situ and uses the rubblized slab as the base material. Then, pavement overlay is applied to finish off the rehabilitation of aged pavement. This rubblization technique has the advantage of solving the problem of reflection cracking completely. When rubblization technique is applied, the upper layer of aged concrete pavement is rubblized between 40mm-70mm in depth. However, the lower layer is typically rubblized more than 100mm in depth. Nevertheless, it is difficult to turn the entire concrete pavement of more than 30cm in depth into rubblized aggregate of appropriate size. Thus, a simulation experiment was carried out to find the appropriate rubblized depth, which avoids the reflection cracking and still maintains the function of subbase, by varying the depth of rubblized depth in loom increments of 0cm, 10cm, and 20cm. The result indicated the optimum rubblized depth was 10cm (Lee, 2006). Additionally, a small rubblizinge equipment was developed in order to derive the rubblization technique appropriate for thick concrete pavement. This equipment was tested out on an experimental pavement, which was constructed with the same standard and specification for the road in actual use, by varying its rubblizing head shape and energy as well as the effective area of rubblization. This experiment led to a prototype equipment for rubblization of thick concrete pavement. The prototype was put into use on a highway, undergoing a test construction and monitoring afterwards. This entire process was necessary for the validation of the proposed rubblization technique.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.128-137
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• 2011

The shut-in pressure calculated in common hydrofracturing test for vertical borehole equals generally to the minimum horizontal principal stress, so it should be considered as an essential parameter for determining the in-situ stress regime around the rock mass. It shows usually an ambiguous value in pressure-time history curves, however, because of the relationship between the behavior of hydraulic fractures and the condition of remote stress regime. In this study, a series of numerical analyses have been carried out to compare several methods for determining the shut-in pressure during hydrofracturing. The hydraulic-mechanical coupling has been applied to numerical analysis for simulating the fracture propagation by hydraulic pressure, and the different discontinuity geometry has been considered in numerical models to examine the effect of numerical element shape on fracture propagation pattern. From the numerical simulations with the four different discontinuity geometries, it was revealed that the shut-in pressure obtained from graphical methods rather than statistical method was relatively small. Consequently a care should be taken in selecting a method for determining the shut-in pressure when a stress anomaly around borehole and a fracture propagation with complicate mechanism are considered.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2003.10b
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• pp.598-600
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• 2003

기존의 재활용기계는 광센서. 근접센서, 자장센서를 이용하여 캔의 부분적인 정보들을 수집하고 캔의 종류를 구별하였다[l]. 이는 시스템 제작비용이 저렴하고 수행속도가 빠르다는 장점이 있지만 오인식 확률이 크기 때문에 제품화 하였을 때 위험부담이 크다는 한계를 지닌다. 따라서, 이와 같은 문제점을 해결하기 위해 본 논문에서는 기계 내부에 카메라를 설치하여 획득된 캔 영상의 특징을 분석하고, 파쇄 가능한 일반 캔과 파쇄해서는 안될 부탄가스 캔을 선별하기 위한 영상처리 기법을 제안한다.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.409-417
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• 2016

The shale gas is emerging as one of the oil and gas resources which can replace the traditional oil and gas resources. As the shale layer where the shale gas is deposited has low permeability, the hydrofracturing method is required to improve the productivity. This study is designed to conduct the laboratory hydrofracturing test on the samples which are modeled after the drilling hole having the general drilling hole and spiral groove. And compare the initial fracturing pressure and fluid contact between them in order to the result of the hydrofracturing depending on the shape of the drilling hole. In addition, the results were compared with the numerical modeling values from 3DEC and they were also compared with the data from the advance researches. It was found from the study that rather than the contact area of the high pressures water, the force concentration depending on the form of guide hole was more effective in the hydrofracturing.