Static Optimization of a Compliant Vertical Access Riser

The compliant vertical access riser(CVAR) is a new riser concept with good compliance; it can significantly reduce operating costs by eliminating the need for additional machines to operate wells directly on the platform. In this study, we determined the optimal riser parameters in terms of the stress and riser weight by optimizing the CVAR, and we compared the optimization results. A two-dimensional nonlinear static CVAR model was deduced according to the principles of virtual work and variation, and the model was verified using MATLAB. Design of experiments and Kriging method were used to reduce the number of sample calculations and improve the modeling accuracy. An appropriate selection of the multi-objective optimization problem(MOP) and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm helped to optimize the CVAR design. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II was used to solve the Pareto frontier of the optimization model in order to provide decision makers with more choices for the optimization results. After optimizing the riser parameters, the geometry of the riser was smoother, and the stress and stress differences were greatly reduced; the maximum equivalent stresses at the top and bottom were reduced by 36.6% and 44%, respectively. In addition, the stress difference in the buoyancy block area was reduced by 20.9%, and the weight of the riser was increased significantly by 28.1%.     

Impacts of SIS and CICE as Sea Ice Components in BCC_CSM on the Simulation of the Arctic Climate

Sea ice is a sensitive indicator of climate change and an important component of climate system models. The Los Alamos Sea Ice Model 5.0(CICE5.0) was introduced to the Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model(BCC_CSM) as a new alternative to the Sea Ice Simulator(SIS). The principal purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of these two sea ice components on simulations of basic Arctic sea ice, atmosphere, and ocean states. Two sets of experiments were conducted with the same configurations except for the sea ice component used, i.e., SIS and CICE. The distributions of sea ice concentration and thickness reproduced by the CICE simulations in both March and September were closer to actual observations than those reproduced by SIS simulations, which presented a very thin sea ice cover in September. Changes in sea ice conditions also brought about corresponding modifications to the atmosphere and ocean circulation. CICE simulations showed higher agreement with the reference datasets than did SIS simulations for surface air temperature, sea level pressure, and sea surface temperature in most parts of the Arctic Ocean. More importantly, compared with simulations with SIS, BCC_CSM with CICE revealed stronger Atlantic meridional overturning circulation(AMOC), which is more consistent with actual observations. Thus, CICE shows better performance than SIS in BCC_ CSM. However, both components demonstrate a number of common weaknesses, such as overestimation of the sea ice cover in winter, especially in the Nordic Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. Additional studies and improvements are necessary to develop these components further.     

Dynamic hydraulic jump and retrograde sedimentation in an open channel induced by sediment supply: experimental study and SPH simulation

Mountainous torrents often carry large amounts of loose materials into the rivers, thus causing strong sediment transport. Experimentally it was found for the first time that when the intensive sediment motion occurs downstream over a gentle slope, the siltation of the riverbed is induced and the sediment particles can move upstream rapidly in the form of a retrograde sand wave, resulting in a higher water level along the river. To further study the complex mechanisms of this problem, a sediment mass model in the framework of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH) method was presented to simulate the riverbed evolution, sediment particle motion, and the generation and development of dynamic hydraulic jump under the condition of sufficient sediment supply over a steep slope with varying angles. Because the sediment is not a continuous medium, the marker particle tracking approach was proposed to represent a piece of sediment with a marked sediment particle. The twophase SPH model realizes the interaction between the sediment and fluid by moving the bed boundary particles up and down, so it can reasonably treat the fluid-sediment interfaces with high CPU efficiency. The critical triggering condition of sediment motion, the propagation of the hydraulic jump and the initial siltation position were all systematically studied. The experimental and numerical results revealed the extra disastrous sediment effect in a mountainous flood. The findings will be useful references to the disaster prevention and mitigation in mountainous rivers.     

Response of the western North Pacific subtropical ocean to the slow-moving super typhoon Nanmadol

Based on in-situ observation, satellite and reanalysis data, responses of the western North Pacific subtropical ocean(WNPSO) to the slow-moving category 5 super typhoon Nanmadol in 2011 are analyzed. The dynamical response is dominated by near-inertial currents and Ekman currents with maximum amplitude of 0.39 m/s and 0.15 m/s, respectively. The near-inertial currents concentrated around 100 m below the sea surface and had an e-folding timescale of 4 days. The near-inertial energy propagated both upward and downward, and the vertical phase speed and wavelength were estimated to be 5 m/h and 175 m, respectively. The frequency of the near-inertial currents was blue-shifted near the surface and redshifted in ocean interior which may relate to wave propagation and/or background vorticity. The resultant surface cooling reaches -4.35℃ and happens when translation speed of Nanmadol is smaller than 3.0 m/s.When Nanmadol reaches super typhoon intensity, the cooling is less than 3.0℃ suggesting that the typhoon translation speed plays important roles as well as typhoon intensity in surface cooling. Upwelling induced by the slow-moving typhoon wind leads to typhoon track confined cooling area and the right-hand bias of cooling is slight. The mixed layer cooling and thermocline warming are induced by wind-generated upwelling and vertical entrainment. Vertical entrainment also led to mixed layer salinity increase and thermocline salinity decrease, however, mixed layer salinity decrease occurs at certain stations as well. Our results suggest that typhoon translation speed is a vital factor responsible for the oceanic thermohaline and dynamical responses, and the small Mach number(slow typhoon translation speed) facilitate development of Ekman current and upwelling.     

A density-based approach for detecting network-constrained clusters in spatial point events

Existing spatial clustering methods primarily focus on points distributed in planar space. However, occurrence locations and background processes of most human mobility events within cities are constrained by the road network space. Here we describe a density-based clustering approach for objectively detecting clusters in network-constrained point events. First, the network-constrained Delaunay triangulation is constructed to facilitate the measurement of network distances between points. Then, a combination of network kernel density estimation and potential entropy is executed to determine the optimal neighbourhood size. Furthermore, all network-constrained events are tested under a null hypothesis to statistically identify core points with significantly high densities. Finally, spatial clusters can be formed by expanding from the identified core points. Experimental comparisons performed on the origin and destination points of taxis in Beijing demonstrate that the proposed method can ascertain network-constrained clusters precisely and significantly. The resulting time-dependent patterns of clusters will be informative for taxi route selections in the future.     

Two-stage permutation tests for determining homogeneity within a spatial cluster

The discovery of spatial clusters formed by proximal spatial units with similar non-spatial attribute values plays an important role in spatial data analysis. Although several spatial contiguity-constrained clustering methods are currently available, almost all of them discover clusters in a geographical dataset, even though the dataset has no natural clustering structure. Statistically evaluating the significance of the degree of homogeneity within a single spatial cluster is difficult. To overcome this limitation, this study develops a permutation test approach Specifically, the homogeneity of a spatial cluster is measured based on the local variance and cluster member permutation, and two-stage permutation tests are developed to determine the significance of the degree of homogeneity within each spatial cluster. The proposed permutation tests can be integrated into the existing spatial clustering algorithms to detect homogeneous spatial clusters. The proposed tests are compared with four existing tests (i.e., Park’s test, the contiguity-constrained nonparametric analysis of variance (COCOPAN) method, spatial scan statistic, and q-statistic) using two simulated and two meteorological datasets. The comparison shows that the proposed two-stage permutation tests are more effective to identify homogeneous spatial clusters and to determine homogeneous clustering structures in practical applications.     

Research on the Optimization of Capital for the Governance of Bulk Coal in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region

Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei each contributed to the comprehensive governance of bulk coal to treat bulk coal pollution in a mutually beneficial way in 2017. The cooperative game theory is used in this paper to study the environmental benefits and cost effectiveness brought about by this comprehensive governance strategy, primarily focusing on the issue of how to maximize the environmental benefits by choosing an appropriate strategy since the benefits to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are closely related. Therefore, the linear optimization, game theory and Shapley value method in the cooperative game model are used to find the ways to minimize the total governance cost of bulk coal in the three areas. In addition, the issues of how to carry out rational distribution and transfer of governance capital among the three places are explored according to the actual amounts of consumption of bulk coal, the influence of the coal burning on the PM_2.5 and the actual cost of coal governance in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in 2017. The results show that the governance task in Hebei Province is the most onerous, and requires more investment than the other two cities. Thus, it requires the support from other two cities, with the amount of increased capital required of about 600 million Yuan. At the same time, the cost saved after optimization in Tianjin is calculated to be the largest, which thus can be adjusted appropriately and allocated to Hebei for the governance of bulk coal. The model constructed in this paper can not only be used to solve the issues related to bulk coal consumption in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, but also to carry out the effective distribution of capital, by which a win-win scenario among the three places can be achieved.     

Species Abundance Distribution Patterns of a Toona ciliata Community in Xingdoushan Nature Reserve

With the goal of model fitting species abundance distribution patterns of the tree, shrub and herb layers of the natural Toona ciliata community in Xingdoushan Nature Reserve, Enshi Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province, we used the data collected from the field survey and employed different ecological niche models. The models tested were the broken stick model (BSM), the overlapping niche model (ONM) and the niche preemption model (NPM), as well as three statistic models, the log-series distribution model (LSD), the log-normal distribution model (LND) and the Weibull distribution model (WDM). To determine the fitted model most suitable to each layer, the fitting effects were judged by criteria of the lowest value of Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Chi-square and the K-S values with no significant difference (P>0.05) between the theoretical predictions and observed species abundance distribution values. The result showed: (1) The fitting suitability and goodness of fit of the tree, shrub and herb layers by using the three ecological niche models were ranked as: NPM>BSM>ONM. Of the three statistical models, by accepting the fitting results of the three layers, WDM was the best fitting model, followed by LND. By rejecting the fitting tests of the herb layer, LSD had the worst fitting effect. The goodness of the statistical models was ranked as: WDM>LND>LSD. In general, the statistical models had better fitting results than the ecological models. (2) T. ciliata was the dominant species of the tree layer. The species richness and diversity of the herb layer were much higher than those of either the tree layer or the shrub layer. The species richness and diversity of the shrub layer were slightly higher than those of the tree layer. The community evenness accorded to the following order: herb>shrub>tree. Considering the fitting results of the different layers, different ecological niche models or statistical models with optimal goodness of fit and ecological significance can be given priority to in studying the species abundance distribution patterns of T. ciliata communities.     

70年来中国化学海洋学研究的主要进展

我国的海洋化学工作者通过70年来,特别是近30年来的化学海洋学研究,实现了我国与世界先进水平进入同步发展的快车道,其显著的特点是:(1)化学海洋学研究从元素地球化学分布系统转向了以揭示深层次海洋生物地球化学过程为核心的研究;(2)化学海洋学研究实现了多领域、多视点的综合交叉研究;(3)更加关注了人为影响与自然变化共同作用下的海洋生态环境变化研究,对近海和海岸带而言,更加注重从海陆统筹一体化角度探析化学物质的分布迁移特征。本文从生源要素的海洋生物地球化学过程、微/痕量元素与同位素的海洋化学研究、生物过程作用下的化学海洋学过程等角度,重点总结归纳和分析了30年来我国海洋化学研究的重要进展和发展状况,以期对化学海洋学的进一步研究提供借鉴和启迪。     

基于HYCOM再分析数据研究琉球海流的形成与起源

The origin of the Ryukyu Current(RC) and the formation of its subsurface velocity core were investigated using a 23-year(1993–2015) global Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model(HYCOM) dataset. The volume transport of the RC comes from the Kuroshio eastward branch(KEB) east of Taiwan and part of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre(pNPSG). From the surface to 2 000 m depth, the KEB(p-NPSG) transport contributes 41.5%(58.5%) to the mean total RC transport. The KEB originally forms the subsurface velocity core of the RC east of Taiwan due to blockage of the subsurface Kuroshio by the Ilan Ridge(sill depth: 700 m). Above 700 m, the Kuroshio can enter the East China Sea(ECS) over the Ilan Ridge, meanwhile, the blocked Kuroshio below 700 m turns to the right and flows along the Ryukyu Islands. With the RC flowing northeastward, the p-NPSG contribution strengthens the subsurface maximum structure of the RC owing to the blockage of the Ryukyu Ridge. In the surface layer, the pNPSG cannot form a stable northeastward current due to frequent disturbance by mesoscale eddies and water exchange through the gaps(with net volume transport into ECS) between the Ryukyu Islands.