Timing of mineralization at the Shihu gold deposit in the middle segment of the Taihang Mountain,China

The Shihu gold deposit, located in the middle-south section of the core of the Fuping mantle branch structure, is hosted in the Archean Fuping Group and adjacent to the quartz diorite porphyrite. The gold deposit is the only large gold deposit with reserves of more than 30 tons gold discovered in western Hebei Province so far. In order to constrain the timing of mineralization of this ore deposit, this paper focuses on the isotopic dating of zircon and pyrite. Zircons in gold-bearing quartz veins are magmatic in origin and no hydrothermal zircon has been found in such quartz veins, indicating that zircons were derived from the wall rocks. U–Pb ages of zircons fall mainly in the two domains: 2492 ± 82 and 136 ± 4 Ma, respectively, indicative of the contribution of the Fuping-Group TTG gneiss and Yanshanian igneous rocks, respectively. The Re–Os isotopic compositions of pyrites in the gold-bearing quartz veins yield an isochron age of 127 ± 31 Ma. Combined with other dating results, we suggest that the main metallogenic age of the Shihu gold deposit is 120–127 Ma.     

大应变静力触探数值模拟及锥形因子影响因素分析

以模拟圆锥在不排水黏土中的静力贯入和分析其影响因素为目标,假设土体为均质弹性—完全塑性材料且服从Mises屈服准则,采用任意拉格朗日—欧拉(ALE)网格划分技术确保锥尖土体在大应变条件下的网格质量,进行大应变有限元数值模拟,并分析了稳定状态下土体刚度指数、原位应力状态和锥尖粗糙程度对塑性区半径与锥形因子的影响,获得了锥形因子表达式。模拟结果表明:塑性区随着刚度指数的增大而增大,锥尖周围塑性区的径向扩张处于柱形孔扩张和球形孔扩张之间,更接近于球形孔扩张;锥形因子随土体刚度指数、锥尖粗糙程度的增大而增大,随土体原位应力状态参数的增大而减小;得到的锥形因子表达式可以量化土体刚度指数、原位应力状态和锥尖粗糙程度的影响,具有较高的精确度。     

崩塌堆积体启动坡面泥石流判别与防治 ——以北川县开坪乡平石板泥石流为例

强震区地震后大量的崩塌堆积体堆积于高陡斜坡中上部,堆积体远离居民点,一旦诱发为坡面泥石流,形成新的次生地质灾害,将严重威胁下方居民的生命财产安全。本文以北川县开坪乡平石板坡面泥石流为例,平石板沟“5.12”地震崩塌堆积体在2010、2013年强降雨作用下失稳转变为坡面泥石流淤积场镇。在平石板泥石流暴发特征介绍基础上,通过粒径不均匀系数、堆积体启动判别指标、后缘汇水面积等来分析崩塌堆积体启动条件及影响因素,并针对此类灾害发育特征,提出了通过上游稳拦固源方法进行治理的防治思路。以期为研究高陡斜坡堆积体的启动机制及防治提供一定的借鉴意义。     

贵州石阡-花桥断裂构造特征及其对地热资源的控制作用

石阡地区具有丰富的地热资源,在石阡-花桥断裂带及其次级构造中形成了一系列的温泉群。断裂构造对地热资源具有严格的控制作用。本文通过对石阡-花桥断裂带显微构造、运动学等构造地质特征和该地区地热特征,系统分析石阡-花桥断裂带构造特征及其对地热资源的控制作用。研究认为,石阡地区地热资源的主要热源为地温梯度增温,地热资源的分布严格受控于石阡-花桥断裂。石阡断裂为逆冲兼左行平移断层,为地热水的传导和储集提供了有利空间。花桥断裂带发育拉张裂隙、扭裂隙及分枝状断层,圈闭了含水岩系,在拉裂破碎带上形成热储。温泉大多沿主要控热、导热断裂出露,平面上呈线状分布于石阡和花桥断裂上盘及花桥断裂的断夹块中。     

Flooding a landscape: impact of Holocene transgression on coastal sedimentology and underwater archaeology in Kiladha Bay (Greece)

Franchthi Cave, bordering Kiladha Bay, in Greece, is a key archaeological site, due to its long occupation time, from?~?40,000 to?~?5000 year BP. To date, no clear evidence of Neolithic human dwellings in the cave was found, supporting the assumption that Neolithic people may have built a village where there is now Kiladha Bay. During the Neolithic period/Early Holocene, wide areas of the bay were indeed emerged above sea level. Bathymetric and seismic data identified a terrace incised by a valley in?~?1 to 2 m sediment depth. Eight sediment cores, up to 6.3-m-long, were retrieved and analysed using petrophysical, sedimentological, geochemical, and chronostratigraphic methods. The longest core extends into the exposure surface, consisting of a layer of carbonate rubble in a finer matrix, representing weathering processes. Dated organic remains place this unit at?~?8500 cal year BP. It is overlain by stiff silty mud representing an estuarine environment. This mud is capped by reduced sediments with roots marking an exposure surface. A shell-layer, dated to?~?6300 cal year BP, overlies this terrestrial sequence, reflecting the marine transgression. This layer occurs at 10.8 mbsl, 7.7 m deeper than the global sea level at that time, suggesting tectonic subsidence in the area. It is overlain by finer-grained marine carbonate-rich sediments. The top of the core shows traces of eutrophication, pebbles and marine shells, all likely a result of modern anthropogenic processes. These results are interpreted in the context of human occupation: the exposed surface contains pottery sherds, one dating to the Early to Middle Neolithic period, indicating that Neolithic people were present in this dynamic landscape interacting with a migrating coastline. Even if the artefacts are isolated, future investigations of the submerged landscape off Franchthi Cave might lead to the discovery of a Neolithic village, which eventually became buried under marine sediments.     

The Fragmentation in a Protoplanetary Disk and the Properties of the Resultant Self-Gravitating Clumps

We study the fragmentation properties in the protoplanetary disk and properties of the resultant self-gravitating clumps using our newly constructed disk model. Our disk model includes the mass inflall term from a molecular cloud core and the photoevaporation winds effect. We adopt the conventional fragmentation criterion to judge whether a protoplanetary disk can fragment. In this work, we follow our previous work to investigate the properties of the resultant self-gravitating clumps. In our calculation, the initial masses of the resultant self-gravitating clumps lie in the range of tens of M_J to more than one hundred of M_J, where M_J is the Jupiter mass. These initial masses can seemingly account for the masses of extrasolar planets in magnitude. We also calculate the subsequent gas accretion of clumps in 1.27 × 10⁴ yr after the formation of self-gravitating clumps. We find that the subsequent gas accretion of self-gravitating clumps is very efficient, and the clump masses grow to hundreds of M_J and the physical radii R_c of clumps increase to about 10 AU. Additionally, we also calculate the orbital migration of clumps. We find that most clumps have short migration timescale to be accreted onto the protostar, and only a small fraction of clumps have long migration timescale (>10⁶ yr) to successfully become gas giant planets. These results are consistent with previous studies.     

Adjoint analysis of Buckley-Leverett and two-phase flow equations

This paper analyzes the adjoint equations and boundary conditions for porous media flow models, specifically the Buckley-Leverett equation, and the compressible two-phase flow equations in mass conservation form. An adjoint analysis of a general scalar hyperbolic conservation law whose primal solutions include a shock jump is initially presented, and the results are later specialized to the Buckley-Leverett equation. The non-convexity of the Buckley-Leverett flux function results in adjoint characteristics that are parallel to the shock front upstream of the shock and emerge from the shock front downstream of the shock. Thus, in contrast to the behavior of Burgers’ equation where the adjoint is continuous at a shock, the Buckley-Leverett adjoint, in general, contains a discontinuous jump across the shock. Discrete adjoint solutions from space-time discontinuous Galerkin finite element approximations of the Buckley-Leverett equation are shown to be consistent with the derived closed-form analytical solutions. Furthermore, a general result relating the adjoint equations for different (though equivalent) primal equations is used to relate the two-phase flow adjoints to the Buckley-Leverett adjoint. Adjoint solutions from space-time discontinuous Galerkin finite element approximations of the two-phase flow equations are observed to obey this relationship.     

High-dimensional geostatistical history matching

Hydrocarbon reservoir modelling and characterisation is a challenging subject within the oil and gas industry due to the lack of well data and the natural heterogeneities of the Earth’s subsurface. Integrating historical production data into the geo-modelling workflow, commonly designated by history matching, allows better reservoir characterisation and the possibility of predicting the reservoir behaviour. We present herein a geostatistical-based multi-objective history matching methodology. It starts with the generation of an initial ensemble of the subsurface petrophysical property of interest through stochastic sequential simulation. Each model is then ranked according the match between its dynamic response, after fluid flow simulation, and the observed available historical production data. This enables building regionalised Pareto fronts and the definition of a large ensemble of optimal subsurface Earth models that fit all the observed production data without compromising the exploration of the uncertainty space. The proposed geostatistical multi-objective history matching technique is successfully implemented in a benchmark synthetic reservoir dataset, the PUNQ-S3, where 12 objectives are targeted.     

Constraint energy minimizing generalized multiscale finite element method in the mixed formulation

This paper presents a novel mass-conservative mixed multiscale method for solving flow equations in heterogeneous porous media. The media properties (the permeability) contain multiple scales and high contrast. The proposed method solves the flow equation in a mixed formulation on a coarse grid by constructing multiscale basis functions. The resulting velocity field is mass-conservative on the fine grid. Our main goal is to obtain first-order convergence in terms of the mesh size which is independent of local contrast. This is achieved, first, by constructing some auxiliary spaces, which contain global information that cannot be localized, in general. This is built on our previous work on the generalized multiscale finite element method (GMsFEM). In the auxiliary space, multiscale basis functions corresponding to small (contrast-dependent) eigenvalues are selected. These basis functions represent the high-conductivity channels (which connect the boundaries of a coarse block). Next, we solve local problems to construct multiscale basis functions for the velocity field. These local problems are formulated in the oversampled domain, taking into account some constraints with respect to auxiliary spaces. The latter allows fast spatial decay of local solutions and, thus, allows taking smaller oversampled regions. The number of basis functions depends on small eigenvalues of the local spectral problems. Moreover, multiscale pressure basis functions are needed in constructing the velocity space. Our multiscale spaces have a minimal dimension, which is needed to avoid contrast dependence in the convergence. The method’s convergence requires an oversampling of several layers. We present an analysis of our approach. Our numerical results confirm that the convergence rate is first order with respect to the mesh size and independent of the contrast.     

Interior boundary-aligned unstructured grid generation and cell-centered versus vertex-centered CVD-MPFA performance

Grid generation for reservoir simulation must honor classical key constraints and be boundary aligned such that control-volume boundaries are aligned with geological features such as layers, shale barriers, fractures, faults, pinch-outs, and multilateral wells. An unstructured grid generation procedure is proposed that automates control-volume and/or control point boundary alignment and yields a PEBI-mesh both with respect to primal and dual (essentially PEBI) cells. In order to honor geological features in the primal configuration, we introduce the idea of protection circles, and to generate a dual-cell feature based grid, we construct halos around key geological features. The grids generated are employed to study comparative performance of cell-centred versus cell-vertex control-volume distributed multi-point flux approximation (CVD-MPFA) finite-volume formulations using equivalent degrees of freedom. The formulation of CVD-MPFA schemes in cell-centred and cell-vertex modes is analogous and requires switching control volume from primal to dual or vice versa together with appropriate data structures and boundary conditions. The relative benefits of both types of approximation, i.e., cell-centred versus vertex-centred, are made clear in terms of flow resolution and degrees of freedom required.