The relationship between geology and rock weathering on the rock instability along Mugling–Narayanghat road corridor, Central Nepal Himalaya

The present study was conducted along the Mugling–Narayanghat road section and its surrounding region that is most affected by landslide and related mass-movement phenomena. The main rock types in the study area are limestone, dolomite, slate, phyllite, quartzite and amphibolites of Lesser Himalaya, sandstone, mudstone and conglomerates of Siwaliks and Holocene Deposits. Due to the important role of geology and rock weathering in the instabilities, an attempt has been made to understand the relationship between these phenomena. Consequently, landslides of the road section and its surrounding region have been assessed using remote sensing, Geographical information systems and multiple field visits. A landslide inventory map was prepared and comprising 275 landslides. Nine landslides representing the whole area were selected for detailed studies. Field surveys, integrated with laboratory tests, were used as the main criteria for determining the weathering zones in the landslide area. From the overall study, it is seen that large and complex landslides are related to deep rock weathering followed by the intervention of geological structures as faults, joints and fractures. Rotational types of landslides are observed in highly weathered rocks, where the dip direction of the foliation plane together with the rock weathering plays a principle role. Shallow landslides are developed in the slope covered by residual soil or colluviums. The rock is rather fresh below these covers. Some shallow landslides (rock topples) are related to the attitude of the foliation plane and are generally observed in fresh rocks. Debris slides and debris flows occur in colluviums or residual soil-covered slopes. In few instances, they are also related to the rock fall occurring at higher slopes. The materials from the rock fall are mixed with the colluviums and other materials lying on the slope downhill and flow as debris flow. Rock falls are mainly related to the joint pattern and the slope angle. They are found in less-weathered rocks. From all these, it is concluded that the rock weathering followed by geological structures has prominent role in the rock slope instability along Mugling–Narayanghat road section and its surrounding regions.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping using certainty factor, index of entropy and logistic regression models in GIS and their comparison at Mugling�CNarayanghat road section in Nepal Himalaya

Landslide susceptibility maps are vital for disaster management and for planning development activities in the mountainous country like Nepal. In the present study, landslide susceptibility assessment of Mugling?CNarayanghat road and its surrounding area is made using bivariate (certainty factor and index of entropy) and multivariate (logistic regression) models. At first, a landslide inventory map was prepared using earlier reports and aerial photographs as well as by carrying out field survey. As a result, 321 landslides were mapped and out of which 241 (75?%) were randomly selected for building landslide susceptibility models, while the remaining 80 (25?%) were used for validating the models. The effectiveness of landslide susceptibility assessment using GIS and statistics is based on appropriate selection of the factors which play a dominant role in slope stability. In this case study, the following landslide conditioning factors were evaluated: slope gradient; slope aspect; altitude; plan curvature; lithology; land use; distance from faults, rivers and roads; topographic wetness index; stream power index; and sediment transport index. These factors were prepared from topographic map, drainage map, road map, and the geological map. Finally, the validation of landslide susceptibility map was carried out using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The ROC plot estimation results showed that the susceptibility map using index of entropy model with AUC value of 0.9016 has highest prediction accuracy of 90.16?%. Similarly, the susceptibility maps produced using logistic regression model and certainty factor model showed 86.29 and 83.57?% of prediction accuracy, respectively. Furthermore, the ROC plot showed that the success rate of all the three models performed more than 80?% accuracy (i.e. 89.15?% for IOE model, 89.10?% for LR model and 87.21?% for CF model). Hence, it is concluded that all the models employed in this study showed reasonably good accuracy in predicting the landslide susceptibility of Mugling?CNarayanghat road section. These landslide susceptibility maps can be used for preliminary land use planning and hazard mitigation purpose.     

Vibration analysis of steel structures including the effect of panel zone flexibility based on the energy method

New approximate formulas are proposed to determine the natural frequencies of structures considering the effects of panel zone flexibility and soil-structure interaction. Several structures with various earthquake resisting systems are idealized as prismatic cantilever flexural-shear beams. Floor masses are considered as lumped masses at each story level and masses of columns are evenly distributed along the cantilever beam. Soil-structure interaction is considered as axial and rotational springs, whose potential energy are formulated and incorporated into overall potential energy of the structure. Subsequently, natural frequency equations are derived on the basis of energy conservation principle. The effect of axial forces on natural frequency is also considered in the proposed formulas. Using the method presented in this study, natural frequencies are computed using a simplified method with no complex numerical modeling. The proposed formulas are verified via experimental and numerical methods. Close agreement between the results from these three approaches are observed. Furthermore, the effects of panel zone flexibility, continuity plates and doubler plates on the natural frequencies of buildings are investigated.     

Advancing tests of relativistic gravity via laser ranging to Phobos

Phobos Laser Ranging (PLR) is a concept for a space mission designed to advance tests of relativistic gravity in the solar system. PLR’s primary objective is to measure the curvature of space around the Sun, represented by the Eddington parameter γ, with an accuracy of two parts in 10⁷, thereby improving today’s best result by two orders of magnitude. Other mission goals include measurements of the time-rate-of-change of the gravitational constant, G and of the gravitational inverse square law at 1.5-AU distances—with up to two orders-of-magnitude improvement for each. The science parameters will be estimated using laser ranging measurements of the distance between an Earth station and an active laser transponder on Phobos capable of reaching mm-level range resolution. A transponder on Phobos sending 0.25-mJ, 10-ps pulses at 1 kHz, and receiving asynchronous 1-kHz pulses from earth via a 12-cm aperture will permit links that even at maximum range will exceed a photon per second. A total measurement precision of 50 ps demands a few hundred photons to average to 1-mm (3.3 ps) range precision. Existing satellite laser ranging (SLR) facilities—with appropriate augmentation—may be able to participate in PLR. Since Phobos’ orbital period is about 8 h, each observatory is guaranteed visibility of the Phobos instrument every Earth day. Given the current technology readiness level, PLR could be started in 2011 for launch in 2016 for 3 yr of science operations. We discuss the PLR’s science objectives, instrument, and mission design. We also present the details of science simulations performed to support the mission’s primary objectives.     

Behavior of crossing flood on foot,associated risk factors and estimating a predictive model

Crossing the flood on foot is one of the two major causes of flood-related death. This study was aimed to determine risk factors associated with risky behavior of crossing the flood on foot and modeling behavior of people when exposed to the flood. Data were gathered by a questionnaire in Quchan, a city of Iran. People with the age of 18–35 years old, those who do not take flood warnings seriously, individuals who do not have experience of exposure to flood and those who believe they have moderate to advanced level of swimming skills were identified as high risk groups. Appropriate group training programs can be set for them to reduce risky behavior of crossing the flood on foot.     

A numerical study on the long term thermo-poroelastic effects of cold water injection into naturally fractured geothermal reservoirs

The residing fracture system and the prevailing in situ stresses have a significant impact on fluid flow and heat transfer in crystalline rocks. The long term response of fracture systems to changes in effective stresses, in particular the long term geo-mechanical effects of thermal stresses on reservoir characteristics is of particular interest to the geothermal industry.     

Rotational failure mechanisms for the face stability analysis of tunnels driven by a pressurized shield

The aim of this paper is to determine the collapse and blow‐out face pressures of a circular tunnel driven by a pressurized shield. The analysis is performed in the framework of the kinematical approach of the limit analysis theory. Two rotational failure mechanisms are proposed for the active and passive cases. These mechanisms have two significant advantages with respect to the available ones: (i) they take into account the entire circular tunnel face instead of an inscribed ellipse to this circular area, and (ii) they are more consistent with the rotational rigid‐block movement observed in the experimental tests. For both the active and passive cases, the three‐dimensional failure surface was generated ‘point by point’ instead of simple use of the existing standard geometric shapes such as cones or cylinders. This was achieved by employing a spatial discretization technique. The numerical results have shown that the present rotational mechanisms provide, in the case of frictional soils (with or without cohesion), a significant improvement with respect to the translational mechanisms. Finally, an extension of the proposed collapse mechanism to include a tension cut‐off in the classical Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion is presented and discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

P–T composition and evolution of paleofluids in the Paleoproterozoic Mag Hill IOCG system,Contact Lake belt,Northwest Territories,Canada

The Echo Bay stratovolcano complex and Contact Lake Belt of the Great Bear Magmatic Zone, Northwest Territories, host a series of coalescing Paleoproterozoic hydrothermal systems that affected an area of several hundred square kilometers. They were caused by intrusion of synvolcanic diorite–monzodioritic plutons into andesitic host rocks, producing several characteristic hydrothermal assemblages. They include early and proximal albite, magnetite–actinolite–apatite, and potassic (K-feldspar) alteration, followed by more distal hematite, phyllic (quartz–sericite–pyrite), and propylitic (chlorite–epidote–carbonate±sericite±albite±quartz) alteration, and finally by late-stage polymetallic epithermal veins. These alteration types are characteristic of iron oxide copper–gold deposits, however, with distal and lower-temperature assemblages similar to porphyry Cu systems. Magnetite–actinolite–apatite alteration formed from high temperature (up to 560 °C) fluids with average salinity of 12.8 wt% NaCl equivalent. The prograde propylitic and phyllic alteration stages are associated with fluids with temperatures varying from 80 to 430 °C and a wide salinity range (0.5–45.6 wt% NaCl equivalent). Similarly, wide fluid temperature (104–450 °C) and salinity (4.2–46.1 wt% NaCl equivalent) ranges are recorded for the phyllic alteration. This was followed by Cu–Ag–U–Zn–Co–Pb sulfarsenide mineralization in late-stage epithermal veins formed at shallow depths and temperatures from 270 °C to as low as 105 °C. The polymetallic veins precipitated from high salinity (mean 30 wt% NaCl equivalent) dense fluids (1.14 g/cm³) with a vapor pressure of 3.8 bars, typical of epithermal conditions. Fluid inclusion evidence indicates that mixed fluids with evolving physicochemical properties were responsible for the formation of the alteration assemblages and mineralization at Mag Hill. An early high temperature, moderate salinity, and magmatic fluid was subsequently modified variably by boiling, mixing with cooler low-salinity meteoric water, and simple cooling. The evidence is consistent with emplacement of the source plutons and stocks into an epithermal environment within ~1 km of surface. This generated near-surface high-temperature alteration in a dynamic hydrothermal system that collapsed (telescoped) resulting in widespread evidence of boiling and epithermal mineralization superimposed on earlier stages of alteration.     

Landslide susceptibility mapping at Zonouz Plain,Iran using genetic programming and comparison with frequency ratio,logistic regression,and artificial neural network models

Without a doubt, landslide is one of the most disastrous natural hazards and landslide susceptibility maps (LSMs) in regional scale are the useful guide to future development planning. Therefore, the importance of generating LSMs through different methods is popular in the international literature. The goal of this study was to evaluate the susceptibility of the occurrence of landslides in Zonouz Plain, located in North-West of Iran. For this purpose, a landslide inventory map was constructed using field survey, air photo/satellite image interpretation, and literature search for historical landslide records. Then, seven landslide-conditioning factors such as lithology, slope, aspect, elevation, land cover, distance to stream, and distance to road were utilized for generation LSMs by various models: frequency ratio (FR), logistic regression (LR), artificial neural network (ANN), and genetic programming (GP) methods in geographic information system (GIS). Finally, total four LSMs were obtained by using these four methods. For verification, the results of LSM analyses were confirmed using the landslide inventory map containing 190 active landslide zones. The validation process showed that the prediction accuracy of LSMs, produced by the FR, LR, ANN, and GP, was 87.57, 89.42, 92.37, and 93.27 %, respectively. The obtained results indicated that the use of GP for generating LSMs provides more accurate prediction in comparison with FR, LR, and ANN. Furthermore; GP model is superior to the ANN model because it can present an explicit formulation instead of weights and biases matrices.     

Adapting project management method and ANFIS strategy for variables selection and analyzing wind turbine wake effect

We present a project management methodology designed for the selection of wind turbines wake effect most influential parameters, who need to run wind farm project for large energy conversion. Very frequently, the managers of these projects are not project management professionals, so they need guidance to have autonomy, using minimal time and documentation resources. Therefore, agile method is adapted to assist the project management. Wind energy poses challenges such as the reduction in the wind speed due to the wake effect by other turbines. If a turbine is within the area of turbulence caused by another turbine, or the area behind another turbine, the wind speed suffers a reduction and, therefore, there is a decrease in the production of electricity. In order to increase the efficiency of a wind farm, analyzing the parameters, which have influence on the wake effect, is one of the focal research areas. To maximize the power produced in a wind farm, it is important to determine and analyze the most influential factors on the wake effects or wake wind speeds since the effect has most influence on the produced power. This procedure is typically called variable selection, and it corresponds to finding a subset of the full set of recorded variables that exhibits good predictive abilities. In this study, architecture for modeling complex systems in function approximation and regression was used, based on using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Variable searching using the ANFIS network was performed to determine how the five parameters affect the wake wind speed. Our article answers the call for renewing the theoretical bases of wind farm project management in order to overcome the problems that stem from the application of methods based on decision-rationality norms, which bracket the complexity of action and interactions in projects.