Gouging abrasion test for rock abrasiveness testing

Wear parts of many mineral processing and mining equipment are often subjected to high stress loads applied at high speeds and at varying angles of incidence, where the prevalent mode of wear is high-stress gouging/sliding impact abrasion. Examples include crusher liners, wear liners in hoppers and chutes, picks on roadheaders, discs on tunnel boring machines and ground engaging tools. Abrasion under these conditions is characterised by a high material removal rate and thus has a direct bearing on wear rates and service life of the equipment concerned. However, at present there appears to be no method for rock abrasiveness assessment under these conditions. This paper describes a new Gouging Abrasion method and apparatus for testing abrasivity of rocks under high-stress gouging/sliding impact wear. A Gouging Abrasion Index (Gi) is introduced, which can be used for prediction and assessment of component life expectancy and efficiency of mineral processing and materials handling equipment. Experimental data from Gouging Abrasion testing of numerous Australian rock types are presented. It is suggested that the results of Gi testing can be used for wear rate predictions for a variety of mineral processing and materials handling equipment working under high-stress gouging/sliding impact abrasion conditions.     

Geotechnical properties of evaporite soils of the Dead Sea area

The Dead Sea Basin is the lowest point on earth and is tectonically subsiding. During the Holocene Period the climate became much drier with increasing evaporation whereby initially lacustrine sediments were deposited from the non-marine brines, giving a multi-layered stratigraphy of lime carbonate and halite sediments. The lime carbonate sediments are comprised of laminated, clay to silt sized, clastic sediments (calcite) and authigenic aragonite and gypsum. The halite commonly appears as rock salt. Chemical industries, based on harvesting the salts from the Dead Sea, have developed on both the Israeli and the Jordanian sides of the basin. The lime carbonate soils are used for dike construction, and these soils, together with significant salt layers, are encountered in the foundations of structures, dikes, and tailings dams, requiring definition of their geotechnical properties. Use of standard soil mechanics definitions and testing approaches for the lime carbonates have been found inapplicable, particularly in view of their exceptionally high saline content, and it has been necessary to develop new concepts. The rock salt is encountered at shallow depths, with unit weights considerably lower than those usually discussed in the literature, and with correspondingly different mechanical properties. The geotechnical properties of these soils, and approaches used to define them, are discussed in the paper.     

Experimental constraints on the effects of pressure and H2O on the fractional crystallization of high-Mg island arc basalt

H₂O-undersaturated melting experiments of synthesized basalt (SiO₂ = 50.7 wt.%, MgO = 8.3 wt.%, Mg# = 60) were conducted at fO₂ corresponding to NNO+1 and NNO−1 to clarify the effects of pressure (2–7 kbar) and H₂O on fractional crystallization in island arcs. H₂O content was ranged from nominally anhydrous to 4.4 wt.%. Differentiation trends, namely the liquid lines of descent, change sensitively according to pressure-H₂O relations. Tholeiitic differentiation trends are reproduced with H₂O ≤ ∼2 wt.% in primary magma. With such quantities of H₂O, fractional crystallization is controlled by olivine + plagioclase at 2 kbar. Increasing the pressure from 2 to ≥4 kbar induces early crystallization of orthopyroxene instead of olivine and therefore SiO₂ enrichment in the residual melts is suppressed. Increasing H₂O (≥ ∼2 wt.% in primary magma) stabilizes clinopyroxene relative to orthopyroxene and/or magnetite. Although the phase relations and proportions strongly depend on fO₂ and H₂O content, differentiation trends are always calc-alkaline.     

Assessing soil erosion in Mediterranean karst landscapes of Lebanon using remote sensing and GIS

Maps showing the potential for soil erosion at 1:100,000 scale are produced in a study area within Lebanon that can be used for evaluating erosion of Mediterranean karstic terrain with two different sets of impact factors built into an erosion model. The first set of factors is: soil erodibility, morphology, land cover/use and rainfall erosivity. The second is obtained by the first adding a fifth factor, rock infiltration. High infiltration can reflect high recharge, therefore decreasing the potential of surface runoff and hence the quantity of transported materials. Infiltration is derived as a function of lithology, lineament density, karstification and drainage density, all of which can be easily extracted from satellite imagery. The influence of these factors is assessed by a weight/rate approach sharing similarities between quantitative and qualitative methods and depending on pair-wise comparison matrix.The main outcome was the production of factorial maps and erosion susceptibility maps (scale 1:100,000). Spatial and attribute comparison of erosion maps indicates that the model that includes a measure of rock infiltration better represents erosion potential. Field investigation of rills and gullies shows 87.5% precision of the model with rock infiltration. This is 17.5% greater than the precision of the model without rock infiltration. These results indicate the necessity and importance of integrating information on infiltration of rock outcrops to assess soil erosion in Mediterranean karst landscapes.     

Deep-seated gravitational slope deformations and their influence on consequent mass movements (case studies from the highest part of the Czech Carpathians)

Gravitational spreading of mountain ridges displays primary disequilibrium of flysch mountain areas of the Czech Carpathians. The progression of various types of mass movements is a product of long-term ridge disintegration and is predisposed by the geological structure of the area and the upper Tertiary-Quaternary morphogenesis of the mountain area. Deep-seated slope deformations are spatially interconnected by the occurrence of some other types of slope deformations (e.g. debris flows, debris slides, slumps, rock avalanches, etc.), which pose a considerable risk for the existence of human society. An important causative factor in these dynamically developing hazardous processes is, among other factors, the way in which land has been used in the last three centuries. Therefore, the occurrence of various types of slope deformations is studied in terms of their relation to deep-seated gravitational deformations and in terms of other limiting factors (structural geological, morphological and climatic factors, manmade impacts, etc.). The paper presents several case studies of slope deformations (Velká Čantoryje Mt, Lysá hora Mt, Ropice Mt and Smrk Mt) in the area of the Outer Carpathians within the territory of the Czech Republic and also adverts to some consequences in terms of the socioeconomic structure of the landscape.     

Spatial Variability of Rock Depth in Bangalore Using Geostatistical, Neural Network and Support Vector Machine Models

Geospatial technology is increasing in demand for many applications in geosciences. Spatial variability of the bed/hard rock is vital for many applications in geotechnical and earthquake engineering problems such as design of deep foundations, site amplification, ground response studies, liquefaction, microzonation etc. In this paper, reduced level of rock at Bangalore, India is arrived from the 652 boreholes data in the area covering 220 km². In the context of prediction of reduced level of rock in the subsurface of Bangalore and to study the spatial variability of the rock depth, Geostatistical model based on Ordinary Kriging technique, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models have been developed. In Ordinary Kriging, the knowledge of the semi-variogram of the reduced level of rock from 652 points in Bangalore is used to predict the reduced level of rock at any point in the subsurface of the Bangalore, where field measurements are not available. A new type of cross-validation analysis developed proves the robustness of the Ordinary Kriging model. ANN model based on multi layer perceptrons (MLPs) that are trained with Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation algorithm has been adopted to train the model with 90% of the data available. The SVM is a novel type of learning machine based on statistical learning theory, uses regression technique by introducing loss function has been used to predict the reduced level of rock from a large set of data. In this study, a comparative study of three numerical models to predict reduced level of rock has been presented and discussed.     

海浪的条件特征周期

在海浪波面高度为正态分布的假定下,导出一种以给定波高为条件的条件周期概率密度函数.与风浪槽中测量数据比较,结果表明,在窄谱情况下此概率密度函数与实验室风浪的实际符合良好.根据此密度函数定义了3种条件特征周期,并导出它们与平均周期的关系式.根据这些关系对有关海洋工程上的一些问题作了解释和讨论.     

Internal generation of waves: Delta source function method and source term addition method

In this study, we investigate two internal wave generation methods in numerical modeling of time-dependent equations for water wave propagation, i.e., delta source function method and source term addition method, the latter of which has been called the line source method in literatures. We derive delta source functions for the Boussinesq-type equations and extended mild-slope equations. By applying the fractional step splitting method, we show that the delta source function method is equivalent to the source term addition method employing the energy velocity. This suggests that the energy velocity should be used rather than the phase velocity for the transport of incident wave energy in the source term addition method. Finally, the performance of the delta source function method is verified by accurately generating nonlinear cnoidal waves as well as linear waves for horizontally one-dimensional cases.     

Generation of random waves in time-dependent extended mild-slope equations using a source function method

We develop techniques of numerical wave generation in the time-dependent extended mild-slope equations of Suh et al. [1997. Time-dependent equations for wave propagation on rapidly varying topography. Coastal Engineering 32, 91–117] and Lee et al. [2003. Extended mild-slope equation for random waves. Coastal Engineering 48, 277–287] for random waves using a source function method. Numerical results for both regular and irregular waves in one and two horizontal dimensions show that the wave heights and the frequency spectra are properly reproduced. The waves that pass through the wave generation region do not cause any numerical disturbances, showing usefulness of the source function method in avoiding re-reflection problems at the offshore boundary.     

河口环流和盐水入侵Ⅱ--径流量和海平面上升的影响

本文利用本序列上篇论文建立的理想河口数值模式,研究径流量和海平面上升对河口环流和盐水入侵的影响.在径流量增大的情况下,口门内表层向海的流速增大,底层向陆的密度流减弱,滞流点下移.口门外侧向口门的密度流增大,上升流趋于增强.口门内盐水入侵减弱,口外盐度减小、冲淡水扩展范围增大.在口门上游北岸底层盐度下降明显,口门处南岸表层盐度下降明显.径流量变化对盐水入侵影响十分巨大.在海平面上升的情况下,拦门沙区域向陆的密度流增强,滞流点上移,表层向海的流动增大.口门内盐水入侵增强,口外盐度增大,冲淡水扩展范围减小.海平面上升对盐水入侵影响十分明显,北岸底层盐度增大尤为特出.