Effect of the sloping seabed on 3D soil-spudcan interaction using a material point-finite element(MPM-FEM)model

The sloping seabed affects the bearing capacity and failure mechanism of soil,which may compromise the stability and safety of offshore structures such as jack-up platforms.This paper employs a coupled model combining the material point method and finite element method(MPM-FEM)to analyze the impact of sloping seabeds on the three-dimensional soil-spudcan interaction.The MPM-FEM model implements the B¯approach to solve the challenge of volumetric locking due to the incompressibility constraints imposed by yield criterion.It is validated against the centrifuge results.The effects of sloping seabeds on penetration resistance,soil flow pattern,lateral response,stress distribution,and failure mechanism are discussed.The soil mainly undergoes overall failure when the ratio of penetration depth to spudcan diameter(i.e.D P/D)is between 0 and 0.25.As the slope angle increases,the soil on the side of lower slope is expelled further,resulting in an asymmetric stress distribution and a larger horizontal sliding force of soil.When D P/D increases to 0.75,the soil transitions to localized plastic flow failure,and the range of soil flow affected by the spudcan penetration decreases.The results show that,when the slope angle increases,the lateral displacement and stress distribution on the lower slope of a sloping seabed is significantly larger than that of a horizontal seabed,impacting the spudcan and surrounding soil behavior.The study suggests that the seabed slope significantly affects the range of soil flow and failure at shallow penetration,indicating that the slope angle should be taken into account in the design and installation of offshore jack-up rigs,particularly in areas with sloping seabeds.

Intelligent prediction of slope stability based on visual exploratory data analysis of 77 in situ cases

Slope stability prediction research is a complex non-linear system problem.In carrying out slope stability prediction work,it often encounters low accuracy of prediction models and blind data preprocessing.Based on 77 field cases,5 quantitative indicators are selected to improve the accuracy of prediction models for slope stability.These indicators include slope angle,slope height,internal friction angle,cohesion and unit weight of rock and soil.Potential data aggregation in the prediction of slope stability is analyzed and visualized based on Six-dimension reduction methods,namely principal components analysis(PCA),Kernel PCA,factor analysis(FA),independent component analysis(ICA),non-negative matrix factorization(NMF)and t-SNE(stochastic neighbor embedding).Combined with classic machine learning methods,7 prediction models for slope stability are established and their reliabilities are examined by random cross validation.Besides,the significance of each indicator in the prediction of slope stability is discussed using the coefficient of variation method.The research results show that dimension reduction is unnecessary for the data processing of prediction models established in this paper of slope stability.Random forest(RF),support vector machine(SVM)and k-nearest neighbour(KNN)achieve the best prediction accuracy,which is higher than 90%.The decision tree(DT)has better accuracy which is 86%.The most important factor influencing slope stability is slope height,while unit weight of rock and soil is the least significant.RF and SVM models have the best accuracy and superiority in slope stability prediction.The results provide a new approach toward slope stability prediction in geotechnical engineering.

Drilling and completion technologies of coalbed methane exploitation: an overview

Coalbed methane(CBM)drilling and completion technologies(DCTs)are signifcant basis for achieving efcient CBM exploration and exploitation.Characteristics of CBM reservoirs vary in diferent regions around the world,thereby,it is crucial to develop,select and apply the optimum DCTs for each diferent CBM reservoir.This paper frstly reviews the development history of CBM DCTs throughout worldwide and clarifes its overall development tendency.Secondly,diferent well types and its characteristics of CBM exploitation are summarized,and main application scopes of these well types are also discussed.Then,the key technologies of CBM drilling(directional drilling tools,measurement while drilling,geo-steering drilling,magnetic guidance drilling,underbalanced drilling and drilling fuids),and the key technologies of CBM completion(open-hole,cavity and under-ream completion,cased-hole completion,screen pipe completion and horizontal well completion)are summarized and analyzed,it is found that safe,economic and efcient development of CBM is inseparable from the support of advanced technologies.Finally,based on the current status of CBM development,the achievements,existing challenges and future prospects are summarized and discussed from the perspective of CBM DCTs.

Role of Soft Matter in the Sandwich Vein of Dragonfly Wing in Its Configuration and Aerodynamic Behaviors

The microstructure of the main longitudinal veins of the dragonfly wing and the aerodynamic behaviors of the wing were investigated in this paper. The microstructure of longitudinal vein presents two circumferential chitin layers and a protein-fiber soft layer. The dragonfly wing is corrugated due to the spatial arrangement of longitudinal veins. It was found that the corru- gation angle could significantly influence the lift/drag ratio across a range of attack angles by the wind tunnel experiments. The results of the finite element analysis indicate that the protein soft layer of vein facilitates the change of the corrugation angle by allowing substantial relative twisting deformation between two neighboring veins, which is not possible in veins without a soft sandwich layer.

Deep Geothermal: The ‘Moon Landing' Mission in the Unconventional Energy and Minerals Space

Deep geothermal from the hot crystalline basement has remained an unsolved frontier for the geothermal industry for the past 30 years. This poses the challenge for developing a new unconventional geomechanics approach to stimulate such reservoirs. While a number of new unconventional brittle techniques are still available to improve stimulation on short time scales, the astonishing richness of failure modes of longer time scales in hot rocks has so far been overlooked. These failure modes represent a series of microscopic processes： brittle microfracturing prevails at low temperatures and fairly high deviatoric stresses, while upon increasing temperature and decreasing applied stress or longer time scales, the failure modes switch to transgranular and intergranular creep fractures. Accordingly, fluids play an active role and create their own pathways through facilitating shear localization by a process of time-dependent dissolution and precipitation creep, rather than being a passive constituent by simply following brittle fractures that are generated inside a shear zone caused by other localization mechanisms. We lay out a new theoretical approach for the design of new strategies to utilize, enhance and maintain the natural permeability in the deeper and hotter domain of geothermal reservoirs. The advantage of the approach is that, rather than engineering an entirely new EGS reservoir, we acknowledge a suite of creep-assisted geological processes that are driven by the current tectonic stress field. Such processes are particularly supported by higher temperatures potentially allowing in the future to target commercially viable combinations of temperatures and flow rates.

EFFECT OF LOADING TYPE ON FATIGUE CRACK GROWTH BEHAVIOR OF SOLDER JOINT IN ELECTRONIC PACKAGING

Fatigue cracking tests of a solder joint were carried out using in-situ scanning electron microscopy （SEM） technology under tensile and bending cyclic loadings. The method for predicting the fatigue life is provided based on the fatigue crack growth rate of the solder joint. The results show that the effect of the loading type on the fatigue crack growth behavior of a solder joint cannot be ignored. In addition, the finite element analysis results help quantitatively estimate the response relationship between solder joint structures. The fatigue crack initiation life of a solder joint is in good agreement with the fatigue life （N50%） of a totally electronic board with 36 solder joints.