Predicting mechanical properties and ultimate shear strength of gypsum,limestone and sandstone rocks using Vipulanandan models

ABSTRACT

In this study, over 1000 data from the literature was used to characterize and compare the density, strengths, modulus, fracture toughness, porosity and the ultimate shear strengths of the gypsum, limestone and sandstone rocks. The compressive modulus and Mode-1 fracture toughness of the gypsum rock, limestone rock and sandstone rocks varied from 0.7 GPa to 70 GPa, and from 0.03 MPa.m^0.5 to 2.6 MPa.m^0.5  respectively. Vipulanandan correlation model was effective in relating the modulus of elasticity, fracture toughness with the relevant strengths of the rocks. A new nonlinear Vipulanandan failure criterion was developed to quantify the tensile strength, pure shear (cohesion) strength and to predict the maximum shear strength limit with applied normal stress on the gypsum, limestone and sandstone rocks. The Vipulanandan failure model predicts the maximum shear strength limit was, as the Mohr-Coulomb failure model does not have a limit on the maximum shear strength. With the Vipulanandan failure model based on the available data, the maximum shear strengths predicted for the gypsum, limestone and sandstone rocks were 64 MPa, 114 MPa and 410 MPa respectively.     

The 2014 seismic hazard model of the Middle East: overview and results

The Earthquake Model of Middle East (EMME) Project aimed to develop regional scale seismic hazard and risk models uniformly throughout a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean in the west to the Himalayas in the east and from the Gulf of Oman in the south to the Greater Caucasus in the North; a region which has been continuously devastated by large earthquakes throughout the history. The 2014 Seismic Hazard Model of Middle East (EMME-SHM14) was developed with the contribution of several institutions from ten countries. The present paper summarizes the efforts towards building a homogeneous seismic hazard model of the region and highlights some of the main results of this model. An important aim of the project was to transparently communicate the data and methods used and to obtain reproducible results. By doing so, the use of the model and results will be accessible by a wide community, further support the mitigation of seismic risks in the region and facilitate future improvements to the seismic hazard model. To this end all data, results and methods used are made available through the web-portal of the European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk (www.efehr.org).     

Changing Land Use a Threat to Surface Water Quality: a Vulnerability Assessment Approach in Zanjanroud Watershed,Central Iran

Maintaining the quality of surface water resources as one of the most vital water supplies has always been at the center of global concerns. A set of manifest and latent factors have yet been identified by researchers worldwide that are subject to affect the quality of surface water. Among which, the effect of land use change, due to a spatial and temporal complexity, is often not easily verifiable. The present study attempts to offer an index-based model to quantify vulnerability of surface water resources in a semi arid basin in central Iran against land use changes. For this, water quality data including Na, K, Mg, Ca, Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR), total anions (Sum. A), SO₄, Cl, HCO₃, EC, TDS, and pH were collected from hydrometric stations over a period of 26 years (1987?2013). In order to detect land use changes, the land use maps of the years 1987, 1998, 2002, 2009, and 2013 were prepared from TM satellite images using supervised classification method. At next step, changing patterns of different land uses were traced by Shanon’s Diversity Index (SHDI) as a metric of patch diversity indicating diversity and heterogeneity of a landscape over time. Relationship between the SHDI values and water quality indicators revealed the impact of land use changes on quality of surface water resources. Statistical analysis confirmed a significant relationship between nine water quality factors and water discharge in the basin during the study period. From 1998 to 2009, the greatest changes were visible in the total anions, Ca, SO₄, and HCO₃. These parameters along with salinity were increasing in almost all sub-basins. According to the results, conversion of poor rangelands to rain fed agriculture fields is the most apparent land use change occurred in the study area over the study period. In 1987, SHDI as an indicator of the diversity and changes in the basin, showed a significant relationship with good rangelands (R² =–0.835). This indicates that fragmentation of the entire watershed area was initiated in 1987, which reached its peak in 2013. Generally speaking, urbanization, poor rangeland, and irrigated agriculture were recognized as three influential land uses adversely affect the water quality in the study area.     

Lower bound limit loads of ship structure components using the mα-tangent method based on single linear elastic analysis

Limit loads for ship structure components are determined in this paper based on a single linear elastic finite element analysis by invoking the concept of kinematically active reference volume in conjunction with the m_α-tangent method. The method enables rapid determination of lower bound limit loads for ship structure components by taking their kinematically inactive volume into consideration. This method is applied to a number of ship structure components possessing different percentages of inactive volume. Results are compared with the corresponding inelastic finite element results, and available analytical solutions.     

Precise Seismic Substructural Model of the Eocene Chorgali Limestone in the Turkwal Oil Field,Central Potwar,Pakistan

The precise seismic substructural interpretation of the Turkwal oil field in the Central Potwar region of district Chakwal of Pakistan has been carried out. The research work was confined to the large fore-thrust that serves as an anticlinal structural trap through ten 2D seismic lines. A precise seismic substructural model of the Eocene Chorgali Limestone with precise orientation of thrust and oblique slip faults shows the presence of a huge fracture, which made this deposit a good reservoir. The abrupt surface changes in dip azimuth for the Eocene Chorgali Limestone verifies the structural trends and also the presence of structural traps in the Turkwal field. The logs of three wells (Turkwal deep X-2, Turkwal-01 and Fimkassar-01) were analyzed for petrophysical studies, well synthetic results and generation of an Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) model for the area. The AVO model of Turkwal deep X-2 shows abrupt changes in amplitude, which depicts the presence of hydrocarbon content. Well correlation technique was used to define the overall stratigraphic setting and the thickness of the reservoir formation in two wells, Turkwal-01 and Turkwal deep X-2. The Eocene Chorgali Limestone in Turkwal-01 is an upward thrusted anticlinal structure and because of the close position of both wells to the faulted anticlinal structure, its lesser thickness differs compared to Turkwal deep X-2. The overall results confirm that the Turkwal field is comparable to several similar thrust-bound oil-bearing structures in the Potwar basin.     

Projecting South Asian summer precipitation in CMIP3 models: A comparison of the simulations with and without black carbon

Considering the importance of black carbon (BC), this study began by comparing the 20th century simulation of South Asian summer climate in IPCC CMIP3, based on the scenario of models with and without BC. Generally, the multi-model mean of the models that include BC reproduced the observed climate relatively better than those that did not. Then, the 21st century South Asian summer precipitation was projected based on the IPCC CMIP3 projection simulations. The projected precipitation in the present approach exhibited a considerable difference from the multimodel ensemble mean (MME) of IPCC AR4 projection simulations, and also from the MME of the models that ignore the effect of BC. In particular, the present projection exhibited a dry anomaly over the central Indian Peninsula, sandwiched between wet conditions on the southern and northern sides of Pakistan and India, rather than homogeneous wet conditions as seen in the MME of IPCC AR4. Thus, the spatial pattern of South Asian summer rainfall in the future may be more complicated than previously thought.     

Numerical modeling of rock failure under dynamic loading with polygonal elements

Polygonal finite elements are gaining an increasing attention in the computational mechanics literature, but their application in rock mechanics is very rare. This paper deals with numerical modeling of rock failure under dynamic loading based on polygonal finite elements. For this end, a damage-viscoplastic constitutive model for rock based on the Mohr-Coulomb criterion with the Rankine criterion as a tensile cutoff is employed and implemented with the polygonal finite element method. Moreover, the mineral mesostructure or rock is described by randomly mapping groups of polygonal elements representing the constituent minerals into a global mesh and assigning these groups with the corresponding mineral material properties. The performance of the polygonal elements is compared with that of the linear and quadratic triangular and bilinear quadrilateral elements in numerical simulations of controlled shear band formation under uniaxial compression and lateral splitting failure in the dogbone tension test. Numerical simulations of uniaxial tension and compression tests as well as dynamic Brazilian disc test under increasing loading rates demonstrate that the present approach predicts the correct failure modes as well as the dynamic increase in strength of rock.     

Magnetoacoustic solitons in dense astrophysical electron-positron-ion plasmas

Nonlinear magnetoacoustic waves in dense electron-positron-ion plasmas are investigated by using three fluid quantum magnetohydrodynamic model. The quantum mechanical effects of electrons and positrons are taken into account due to their Fermionic nature (to obey Fermi statistics) and quantum diffraction effects (Bohm diffusion term) in the model. The reductive perturbation method is employed to derive the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation for low amplitude magnetoacoustic soliton in dense electron-positron-ion plasmas. It is found that positron concentration has significant impact on the phase velocity of magnetoacoustic wave and on the formation of single pulse nonlinear structure. The numerical results are also illustrated by taking into account the plasma parameters of the outside layers of white dwarfs and neutron stars/pulsars.     

A MODEL-BASED ASSESSMENT OF IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON BORO RICE YIELD IN BANGLADESH

Rice is the main food crop in densely populated Bangladesh. Regional climatic variations can play an important role in rice productivity. For example, excessive heat or extremely cool conditions disrupt normal plant physiological processes and cause plant injury which, in turn, results in reduction of yield. In this study, the climatic crop productivity model YIELD has been applied to calculate rice productivity for the boro rice growing season (December/January-May) in Bangladesh under changing climatic conditions. The model estimates climatic influences on various rice plant-growth parameters. YIELD was tuned and validated to Bangladesh's environment to represent appropriate agroecological conditions. The model was run using long-term average climate data of 12 meteorological stations located in the major rice-growing regions in Bangladesh to establish baseline estimates of yield. For the climate change study, 20 scenarios were created by synthetically fluctuating thermal and solar climates in Bangladesh. Study results show that per 1° C increase in growing season mean air temperature, boro rice yield was reduced by 4.6%. It was also found that each 10% increase in incident solar radiation resulted in a 6.5% increase of boro rice yield in Bangladesh.     

A simulation study of microstructure evolution inside the shear band in biaxial compression test

We study the development of microstructure inside the shear band in granular media consisting of elliptical‐shaped particles. Plane strain biaxial compression test was simulated using two‐dimensional distinct element method. The generation of large voids and concentration of excessive particle rotation inside a shear band are found in a quite similar manner to those observed in natural soils. Evolution of the microstructure inside and outside the shear band is studied. The magnitude and direction of particle rotation inside the shear band is influenced by orientation of long axes of elliptical particles. Because of such particle rotations inside the shear band, the preferred alignment of particles becomes horizontal in the residual state, which results in a more anisotropic contact normal distribution oriented along the major principal stress axis. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.