• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.697-707
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• 2012

The quantitative landslide susceptibility assessment methods can be divided into statistical approaches and geomechanical approaches based on the consideration of the triggering factors and landslide models. The geomechanical approach is considered as one of the most effective approaches since this approach proposes physical slope model and considers geomorphological and geomechanical properties of slope materials. Therefore, the geomechanical approaches has been used widely in landslide susceptibility analysis using the infinite slope model as physical slope model. However, the previous studies assumed constant groundwater level for broad study area without the consideration of rainfall intensity and hydraulic properties of soil materials. Therefore, in this study, landslide susceptibility assessment was implemented using the coupled infinite slope model with hydrologic model. For the analysis, geomechanical and hydrualic properties of slope materials and rainfall intensity were measured from the soil samples which were obtained from field investigation. For the practical application, the proposed approach was applied to Jinbu area, Gangwon-Do which was experienced large amount of landslides in July 2006. In order to compare to the proposed approach, the previous approach was used to analyze the landslide susceptibility using randomly selected groundwater level. Comparison of the results shows that the accuracy of the proposed method was improved with the consideration of the hydrologic model.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.213-222
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• 2024

Determination of jointed rock mass properties plays a significant role in the design and construction of underground structures such as tunneling and mining. Rock mass classification systems such as Rock Mass Rating (RMR), Rock Mass Index (RMi), Rock Mass Quality (Q), and deformation modulus (Em) are determined from the jointed rock masses. However, parameters of jointed rock masses can be affected by the tunnel depth below the surface due to the effect of the in situ stresses. In addition, the geomechanical properties of rocks change due to the effect of metamorphism. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to apply correlation analysis to investigate the relationships between rock mass properties and some parameters related to the depth of the tunnel studied. For this purpose, the field work consisted of determining rock mass parameters in a tunnel alignment (~7.1 km) at varying depths from 21 m to 431 m below ground surface. At the same excavation depths, thirty-seven rock types were also sampled and tested in the laboratory. Correlations were made between vertical stress and depth, horizontal/vertical stress ratio (k) and depth, k and Em, k and RMi, k and point load index (PLI), k and Brazilian tensile strength (BTS), Em and uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), UCS and PLI, UCS and BTS. Relationships were significant (significance level=0.000) at the confidence interval of 95% (r = 0.77-0.88) between the data pairs for the rocks taken from depths greater than 166 m where the ratio of horizontal to vertical stress is between 0.6 and 1.2. The in-situ stress parameters affected rock mass properties as well as metamorphism which affected the geomechanical properties of rock materials by affecting the behavior of minerals and textures within rocks. This study revealed that in-situ stress parameters and metamorphism should be reviewed when tunnel studies are carried out.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.331-339
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• 2018

Worldwide growth in hydrocarbon and energy demand is driving the oil and gas companies to drill more wells in complex situations such as areas with high-pressure, high-temperature conditions. As a result, in recent years the number of wells in these conditions have been increased significantly. Wellbore instability is one of the main issues during the drilling operation especially for directional and horizontal wells. Many researchers have studied the wellbore stability in complex situations and developed mathematical models to mitigate the instability problems before drilling operation. In this work, a fully coupled thermoporoelastic model is developed to study the well stability in high-pressure, high-temperature conditions. The results show that the performance of the model is highly dependent on the truly evaluated rock mechanical properties. It is noted that the rock mechanical properties should be evaluated at elevated pressures and temperatures. However, in many works, this is skipped and the mechanical properties, which are evaluated at room conditions, are entered into the model. Therefore, an accurate stability analysis of high-pressure, high-temperature wells is achieved by measuring the rock mechanical properties at elevated pressures and temperatures, as the difference between the model outputs is significant.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.393-405
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• 2019

This paper evaluates the geotechnical and geo-engineering properties of the South Pars Zone (SPZ) marls in Assalouyeh, Iran. These marly beds mostly belong to the Aghajari and Mishan formations which entail the gray, cream, black, green, dark red and pink types. Marls can be observed as rock (soft rock) or soil. Marlstone outcrops show a relatively rapid change to soils in the presence of weathering. To geotechnically characterise the marls, field and laboratory experiments such as particle-size distribution, hydrometer, Atterberg limits, uniaxial compression, laboratory direct-shear, durability and carbonate content tests have been performed on soil and rock samples to investigate the physico-mechanical properties and behaviour of the SPZ marls in order to establish empirical relations between the geo-engineering features of the marls. Based on the experiments conducted on marly soils, the USCS classes of the marls is CL to CH which has a LL ranging from 32 to 57% and PL ranging from 18 to 27%. Mineralogical analyses of the samples revealed that the major clay minerals of the marls belong to the smectite or illite groups with low to moderate swelling activities. The geomechanical investigations revealed that the SPZ marls are classified as argillaceous lime, calcareous marl and marlstone (based on the carbonate content) which show variations in the geomechanical properties (i.e., with a cohesion ranging from 97 to 320 kPa and a friction angle ranging from 16 to 35 degrees). The results of the durability tests revealed that the degradation potential showed a wide variation from none to fully disintegrated. According to the results of the experiments, the studied marls have been classified as calcareous marl, marlstone and argillaceous lime due to the variations in the carbonate and clay contents. The results have shown that an increase in the carbonate content leads to a decrease in the degradation potential and an increase in the density and strength parameters such as durability and compressive strength. A comparison of the empirical relationships obtained from the regression analyses with similar studies revealed that the results obtained herein are reasonably reliable.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.281-293
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• 2021

Uncertainties in geomechanical input parameters which mainly related to inappropriate data acquisition and estimation due to lack of sufficient calibration information, have led wellbore instability not yet to be fully understood or addressed. This paper demonstrates a workflow of employing Quantitative Risk Assessment technique, considering these uncertainties in terms of rock properties, pore pressure and in-situ stresses to makes it possible to survey not just the likelihood of accomplishing a desired level of wellbore stability at a specific mud pressure, but also the influence of the uncertainty in each input parameter on the wellbore stability. This probabilistic methodology in conjunction with Monte Carlo numerical modeling techniques was applied to a case study of a well. The response surfaces analysis provides a measure of the effects of uncertainties in each input parameter on the predicted mud pressure from three widely used failure criteria, thereby provides a key measurement for data acquisition in the future wells to reduce the uncertainty. The results pointed out that the mud pressure is tremendously sensitive to UCS and SHmax which emphasize the significance of reliable determinations of these two parameters for safe drilling. On the other hand, the predicted safe mud window from Mogi-Coulomb is the widest while the Hoek-Brown is the narrowest and comparing the anticipated collapse failures from the failure criteria and breakouts observations from caliper data, indicates that Hoek-Brown overestimate the minimum mud weight to avoid breakouts while Mogi-Coulomb criterion give better forecast according to real observations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.73-76
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• 1999

Soil-bentonite mixtures are frequently used as impervious for waste disposal sites. In the present work, bentonite composite liner systems(BCL) have been developed by utilizing Korean zeolitic bentonites. The geomechanical properties of the liner systems, such as strength, hydraulic conductivity, etc. have been studied. The laboratory and field test results are also be presented.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.20-29
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• 2021

During multi-stage fracturing in a low permeable shale formation, stress interference occurs between the stages which is called the "stress shadow effect(SSE)". The effect may alter the fracture propagation direction and induce ununiform geometry. In this study, the stress shadow effect on the hydraulic fracture geometry and the well productivity were investigated by the commercial full-3D fracture model, GOHFER. In a homogeneous reservoir model, a multi-stage fracturing process was performed with or without the SSE. In addition, the fracturing was performed on two shale reservoirs with different geomechanical properties(Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio) to analyze the stress shadow effect. In the simulation results, the stress change caused by the fracture created in the previous stage switched the maximum/minimum horizontal stress and the lower productivity L-direction fracture was more dominating over the T-direction fracture. Since the Marcellus shale is more brittle than more dominating over the T-direction fracture. Since the Marcellus shale is more brittle than the relatively ductile Eagle Ford shale, the fracture width in the former was developed thicker, resulting in the larger fracture volume. And the Marcellus shale's Young's modulus is low, the stress effect is less significant than the Eagle Ford shale in the stage 2. The stress shadow effect strongly depends on not only the spacing between fractures but also the geomechanical properties. Therefore, the stress shadow effect needs to be taken into account for more accurate analysis of the fracture geometry and for more reliable prediction of the well productivity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09b
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• pp.45-52
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• 2010

Thermal properties of geomaterial are overlooked with other geomechanical properties. The transient line-source (TLS) method is one of the most used testing methods for measuring the thermal conductivity (K) and thermal diffusivity ($\alpha$) of materials. But more recently, Transient Plane-Source method was developed to measure these. It has several advantage of comparing with TSL method, but there has not been documented application in geomaterial. A Resistance Temperature Detector is used to construct sensor. For durability of Probe, Adopt a new technique that two probes are bonded in exact matching. For standard materials, such as glycerin, and ice the measured K and a values of these materials were generally within 2-5% from the standard values in the literature. This document present to evaluate the thermal properties of geomaterials and its application was tested for varying degree of saturation using the Transient Plane Source method. The result of this study suggests that it is an comparatively accurate method for simultaneously measuring thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity and can identify the feasibility to geomaterial.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.416-422
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• 2010

Estimating condition of geotechnical structures are difficult because of nonlinear time dependency and seasonal effects. Measuring data of structure failure is highly variable in time and space, and a unique approach cannot be defined to model structure movements. Characteristics of movements are obtained by using a statistical method called Principal Component Analysis(PCA). The PCA is a non-parametric method to separate unknown, statistically uncorrelated source processes from observed mixed processes. Instead, since the "best" mathematical relationship is estimated for given data sets of the input and output measured from target systems. As a consequence, this method is advantageous in modeling systems whose geomechanical properties are unknown or difficult to be measured.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.65-70
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• 2000

Recently, soil-bentonite mixtures are frequently used as impervious liners for waste disposal sites. In the present work, bentonite composite liner systems have been developed by utilizing Korean zeolitic bentonites. The geomechanical properties of the liner systems, such as strength hydraulic conductivity, etc. have also been studied. The laboratory and field test results showed that uniaxial strengths of the system were improved by addition of bentonite and CaO-based additive to the upper and lower layer of the liner systems, respectively. Hydraulic conductivity values measured on field liner systems showed less $1{\times}10^{-3}cm/s$, which is considered to be minimum regulation requirement for waste disposal sites.