• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.4
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• pp.505-513
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• 2018

Steam flooding is widely used in heavy oil reservoir with coupling effects among the formation temperature change, fluid flow and solid deformation. The effective stress, porosity and permeability in this process can be affected by the multi-physical coupling of thermal, hydraulic and mechanical processes (THM), resulting in a complex interaction of geomechanical effects and multiphase flow in the porous media. Quantification of the state of deformation and stress in the reservoir is therefore essential for the correct prediction of reservoir efficiency and productivity. This paper presents a coupled fluid flow, thermal and geomechanical model employing a program (MATLAB interface code), which was developed to couple conventional reservoir (ECLIPSE) and geomechanical (ABAQUS) simulators for coupled THM processes in multiphase reservoir modeling. In each simulation cycle, time dependent reservoir pressure and temperature fields obtained from three dimensional compositional reservoir models were transferred into finite element reservoir geomechanical models in ABAQUS as multi-phase flow in deforming reservoirs cannot be performed within ABAQUS and new porosity and permeability are obtained using volumetric strains for the next analysis step. Finally, the proposed approach is illustrated on a complex coupled problem related to steam flooding in an oil reservoir. The reservoir coupled study showed that permeability and porosity increase during the injection scenario and increasing rate around injection wells exceed those of other similar comparable cases. Also, during injection, the uplift occurred very fast just above the injection wells resulting in plastic deformation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.363-373
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• 2018

The evaluation of Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) coupling behavior is important for the development of underground space for various purposes. For a high-level radioactive waste repository excavated in a deep underground rock mass, the accurate prediction of the complex THM behavior is essential for the long-term safety and stability assessment. In order to develop reliable THM analysis techniques effectively, an international cooperation project, Development of Coupled models and their Validation against Experiments (DECOVALEX), was carried out. In DECOVALEX-2015 Task B2, the in situ THM experiment that was conducted at Horonobe Underground Research Laboratory(URL) by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), was modeled by the research teams from the participating countries. In this study, a THM coupling technique that combined TOUGH2 and FLAC3D was developed and applied to the THM analysis for the in situ experiment, in which rock, buffer, backfill, sand, and heater were installed. With the assistance of an artificial neural network, the boundary conditions for the experiment could be adequately implemented in the modeling. The thermal, hydraulic, and mechanical results from the modeling were compared with the measurements from the in situ THM experiment. The predicted buffer temperature from the THM modelling was about $10^{\circ}C$ higher than measurement near by the overpack. At the other locations far from the overpack, modelling predicted slightly lower temperature than measurement. Even though the magnitude of pressure from the modeling was different from the measurements, the general trends of the variation with time were found to be similar.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 1999

A finite element code was developed to analyze coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical phenomena. This code is based on the finite element formulation provided by Noorishad et al. (1984) and Joint behavior was simulated Goodman's joint constitutive model. The developed code was applied for T-H-M coupling analysis for two kinds of shaft models, with a joint or without a joint respectively. For a model without a joint, temperature increased from the shaft wall to outward evidently. The radial displacement showed opposite directions of outward and inward at some distance from shaft wall. For a model with a joint, closure of joint was found due to thermal expansion. The temperature distribution along a joint showed relatively lower than that of rock matrix because of low thermal conductivity and high specific heat of water. And it could be concluded that effects of thermal flow to joint were more than that of hydraulic flow in a rock mass.

• 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.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.315-333
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• 2022

Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) modeling is highly effective to reveal deformations, fatigue failures, and stresses on a solid domain caused by the fluid flow. Mechanical properties of the solid structures and the thermophysical properties of fluids can change under different operating conditions. In this study, we investigated the interaction of [45/-45]₂ wounded composite tubes with the fluid flows suddenly pressurized to 5 Bar, 10 Bar, and 15 Bar at the ambient temperatures of 24℃, 66℃, and 82℃, respectively. Numerical analyzes were performed under each temperature and pressure condition and the results were compared depending on the time in a period and along the length of the tube. The main purpose of this study is to present the effects of the variations in fluid characteristics by temperature and pressure on the structural response. The variation of the thermophysical properties of the fluid directly affects the deformation and stress in the material due to the Wall Shear Stress (WSS) generated by the fluid flow. The increase or decrease in WSS directly affected the deformations. Results show that the increase in deformation is more than 50% between 5 Bar and 10 Bar for the same operating condition and it is more than 100% between 5 Bar and 15 Bar by the increase in pressure, as expected in terms of the solid mechanics. In the case of the increase in the temperature of fluid and ambient, the WSS and Von Mises stress decrease while the slight increases of deformations take place on the tube. On the other hand, two-way FSI modeling is needed to observe the effects of hydraulic shock and developing flow on the structural response of composite tubes.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.38-61
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• 2023

An Excavation Damaged Zone(EDZ) caused by blasting impact changes rock properties, in situ stress distribution, etc., and its effects are noticeable at around a radioactive waste repository located at deep underground. In particular, the increase in permeability due to the formation of cracks may significantly increase the amount of groundwater inflow and the possibility of radioactive nuclide outflow. In this study, FLAC2D and FLAC3D were used to analyze the mechanical and thermal behaviors for three categories: a)No EDZ, b)Uniform EDZ, and c)Random EDZ. It was found that the tunnel displacement in the Random EDZ case was 423% higher than that in the No EDZ case and was 16% higher than that in the Uniform EDZ case. Tunnel inflow in the Random EDZ was also 17.3% and 10.8% higher than that in the No EDZ and the Uniform EDZ case, respectively. The permeability around the tunnel was increased by up to 10 times in the corner of the tunnel wall and roof due to the stress redistribution after excavation. From the computer simulation, it was found that the permeability around the tunnel wall was partially increased but the overall tunnel inflow was decreased with increase of stress ratio. Mechanical analysis using FLAC 3D showed similar results. Slight difference between 2D and 3D could be explained with the development of plastic zone during the advance of tunnel excavation in 3D.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2471-2478
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• 2020

Pumps are essential machinery in the various industries. With the development of high-speed and large-scale pumps, especially high energy density, high requirements have been imposed on the vibration and noise performance of pumps, and cavitation is an important source of vibration and noise excitation in pumps, so it is necessary to improve pumps cavitation performance. The modern pump optimization design method mainly adopts parameterization and artificial intelligence coupling optimization, which requires direct correlation between geometric parameters and pump performance. The existing cavitation performance calculation method is difficult to be integrated into multi-objective automatic coupling optimization. Therefore, a fast prediction method for pump cavitation performance is urgently needed. This paper proposes a novel cavitation prediction method based on impeller pressure isosurface at single-phase media. When the cavitation occurs, the area of pressure isosurface S_iso increases linearly with the NPSH_a decrease. This demonstrates that with the development of cavitation, the variation law of the head with the NPSH_a and the variation law of the head with the area of pressure isosurface are consistent. Therefore, the area of pressure isosurface S_iso can be used to predict cavitation performance. For a certain impeller blade, since the area ratio R_s is proportional to the area of pressure isosurface S_iso, the cavitation performance can be predicted by the R_s. In this paper, a new cavitation performance prediction method is proposed, and the feasibility of this method is demonstrated in combination with experiments, which will greatly accelerate the pump hydraulic optimization design.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.65-73
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• 2013

Ground-coupled heat pump system has attracted attention as a promising renewable energy technology due to its improving energy efficiency and eco-friendly mechanism for space cooling and heating. Pipes buried in the ground play a role of direct thermal interaction between circulating fluid inside the pipe and surrounding soils in the geothermal exchange system. However, both complexities of turbulent flow coupling thermal-hydraulic phenomena and very long aspect ratio of the pipe make it difficult to model the heat exchange system directly. Energy balance for fluid flow inside the pipe was derived to model thermal-hydraulic phenomena, and one-dimensional pipe element was proposed through Galerkin formation and time integration of the equation. Developed element is combined to pre-developed FEM code for THM phenomena in porous media. Numerical results of Thermal Response Test showed that line-source model overestimates equivalent thermal conductivity of surrounding soils due to thermal interaction between adjacent pipes and finite length of the pipe. Thus, inverse analysis for the TRT simulation was conducted to present optimal transformation matrix with utmost convergence.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.197-213
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• 2019

We simulated the fault reactivation experiment conducted at 'Main Fault' intersecting the low permeability clay formations of Mont Terri Underground Research Laboratory in Switzerland using TOUGH-FLAC simulator. The fluid flow along a fault was modelled with solid elements and governed by Darcy's law with the cubic law in TOUGH2, whereas the mechanical behavior of a single fault was represented by creating interface elements between two separating rock blocks in FLAC3D. We formulate the hydro-mechanical coupling relation of hydraulic aperture to consider the elastic fracture opening and failure-induced dilation for reproducing the abrupt changes in injection flow rate and monitoring pressure at fracture opening pressure. A parametric study was conducted to examine the effects of in-situ stress condition and fault deformation and strength parameters and to find the optimal parameter set to reproduce the field observations. In the best matching simulation, the fracture opening pressure and variations of injection flow rate and monitoring pressure showed good agreement with field experiment results, which suggests the capability of the numerical model to reasonably capture the fracture opening and propagation process. The model overestimated the fault displacement in shear direction and the range of reactivated zone, which was attributed to the progressive shear failures along the fault at high injection pressure. In the field experiment results, however, fracture tensile opening seems the dominant mechanism affecting the hydraulic aperture increase.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.1537-1542
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• 2011

This paper presents the power management strategies for a compound hybrid excavator. The compound hybrid excavator has been replaced the hydraulic swing motor to the electric swing motor. This excavator requires a proper control algorithm to regulate the energy flow between the mechanical coupling and the electric devices. The controller should improve fuel economy and maintain the super capacitor voltage within a proper range. A thermostat controller and ECMS controller are designed such that these objectives can be achieved. The thermostat controller regulates the power of the engine-assist motor on the basis of the super capacitor voltage, and the ECMS controller determines it using the real-time fuel minimization strategy based on the concept of equivalent fuel. Simulation results showed that by using the hybrid excavator, the fuel economy becomes about 20% higher than that obtained using the conventional excavator and that the ECMS controller outperforms the thermostat controller.