• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2015

The development of railway roadbed for 600km/h train speed level is very difficult because unpredictable static and dynamic interaction occurs between the ultra-high speed train and the infrastructure. Especially, an earthwork-bridge transition zone is a section in which influential factors react, such as bearing capacity, compression, settlement, drainage, and track irregularity; these interactions can include complicated dynamic interaction. Therefore, if static and dynamic stability are secured in transition zones, it is possible to develop roadbeds for ultra-high speed railways. In the present paper, design parameters for transition reinforcement applied to present railway design criteria are analytically examined for ultra-high speed usage on a preferential basis. Design parameters are the presence of reinforcing materials, geometric shape, stiffness of materials, and so on. Analysis is focused on the deformation response of the track and running stability at ultra-high speed.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.75-84
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• 2020

Modular construction is a construction method whereby prefabricated volumetric units are produced in a factory and are installed on site to form a building block. The construction productivity can be substantially improved by the manufacturing and assembly of standardized modular units. 3D printing is a computer-controlled fabrication method first adopted in the manufacturing industry and was utilized for the automated construction of small-scale houses in recent years. Implementing 3D printing in the fabrication of modular units brings huge benefits to modular construction, including increased customization, lower material waste, and reduced labor work. Such implementation also benefits the large-scale and wider adoption of 3D printing in engineering practice. However, a critical issue for 3D printed modules is the loading capacity, particularly in response to horizontal forces like wind load, which requires a deeper understanding of the building structure behavior and the design of load-bearing modules. Therefore, this paper presents the state-of-the-art literature concerning recent achievement in 3D printing for buildings, followed by discussion on the opportunities and challenges for examining 3D printing in modular construction. Promising 3D printing techniques are critically reviewed and discussed with regard to their advantages and limitations in construction. The appropriate structural form needs to be determined at the design stage, taking into consideration the overall building structural behavior, site environmental conditions (e.g., wind), and load-carrying capacity of the 3D printed modules. Detailed finite element modelling of the entire modular buildings needs to be conducted to verify the structural performance, considering the code-stipulated lateral drift, strength criteria, and other design requirements. Moreover, integration of building information modelling (BIM) method is beneficial for generating the material and geometric details of the 3D printed modules, which can then be utilized for the fabrication.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.83-94
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• 2011

Extra heavy oil reservoirs are distributed over the world but most of them is deposited in the northern part of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, in the area of 5,500 $km^2$, This region, which has been commonly called "the Orinoco Oil Belt", contains estimated 1.3 trillion barrels of original oil-in-place and 250 billion barrels of established reserves. The Venezuela extra heavy oil has an API gravity of less than 10 degree and in situ viscosity of 5,000 cP at reservoir condition. Although the presence of extra heavy oil in the Orinoco Oil Belt has been initially reported in the 1930's, the commercial development using in situ cold production started in the 1990's. The Orinoco heavy oil deposits are clustered into 4 development areas, Boyaco, Junin, Ayachoco, and Carabobo respectively, and they are subdivided into totally 31 production blocks. Nowadays, PDVSA (Petr$\'{o}$leos de Venzuela, S.A.) makes a development of each production block with the international oil companies from more than 20 countries forming a international joint-venture company. The Eastern Venezuela Basin, the Orinoco Oil Belt is included in, is one of the major oil-bearing sedimentary basins in Venezuela and is first formed as a passive margin basin by the Jurassic tectonic plate motion. The major source rock of heavy oil is the late Cretaceous calcareous shale in the central Eastern Venezuela Basin. Hydrocarbon materials migrated an average of 150 km up dip to the southern margin of the basin. During the migration, lighter fractions in the hydrocarbon were removed by biodegradation and the oil changed into heavy and/or extra heavy oil. Miocene Oficina Formation, the main extra heavy oil reservoir, is the unconsolidated sand and shale alternation formed in fluvial-estuarine environment and also has irregularly a large number of the Cenozoic faults induced by basin subsidence and tectonics. Because Oficina Formation has not only complex lithology distribution but also irregular geology structure, geological evolution and characteristics of the reservoirs have to be determined for economical production well design and effective oil recovery. This study introduces geological formation and evolution of the Venezuela extra heavy oil reservoirs and suggest their significant geological characteristics which are (1) thickness and geometry of reservoir pay sands, (2) continuity and thickness of mud beds, (3) geometry of faults, (4) depth and geothermal character of reservoir, (5) in-situ stress field of reservoir, and (6) chemical composition of extra heavy oil. Newly developed exploration techniques, such as 3-D seismic survey and LWD (logging while drilling), can be expected as powerful methods to recognize the geological reservoir characteristics in the Orinoco Oil Belt.