Enhanced Hoek-Brown(H-B)criterion for rocks exposed to chemical corrosion

Underground constructions often encounter water environments,where water–rock interaction can increase porosity,thereby weakening engineering rocks.Correspondingly,the failure criterion for chemically corroded rocks becomes essential in the stability analysis and design of such structures.This study enhances the applicability of the Hoek-Brown(H-B)criterion for engineering structures operating in chemically corrosive conditions by introducing a kinetic porosity-dependent instantaneous mi(KPIM).A multiscale experimental investigation,including nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR),X-ray diffraction(XRD),scanning electron microscopy(SEM),pH and ion chromatography analysis,and triaxial compression tests,is employed to quantify pore structural changes and their linkage with the strength responses of limestone under coupled chemical-mechanical(C-M)conditions.By employing ion chromatography and NMR analysis,along with incorporating the principles of free-face dissolution theory accounting for both congruent and incongruent dissolution,a kinetic chemical corrosion model is developed.This model aims to calculate the kinetic porosity alterations within rocks exposed to varying H+concentrations and durations.Subsequently,utilizing the generalized mixture rule(GMR),the kinetic porositydependent mi is formulated.Evaluation of the KPIM-enhanced H-B criterion using compression test data from 5 types of rocks demonstrated a high level of consistency between the criterion and the experimental results,with a coefficient of determination greater than 0.96,a mean absolute percentage error less than 4.84%,and a root-mean-square deviation less than 5.95 MPa.Finally,the physical significance of the porosity-dependent instantaneous mi is clarified:it serves as an indicator of a rock’s capacity to leverage the confining pressure effect.

Stochastic and upscaled analytical modeling of fines migration in porous media induced by low-salinity water injection

Fines migration induced by injection of low-salinity water(LSW) into porous media can lead to severe pore plugging and consequent permeability reduction. The deepbed filtration(DBF) theory is used to model the aforementioned phenomenon, which allows us to predict the effluent concentration history and the distribution profile of entrapped particles. However, the previous models fail to consider the movement of the waterflood front. In this study, we derive a stochastic model for fines migration during LSW flooding, in which the Rankine-Hugoniot condition is used to calculate the concentration of detached particles behind and ahead of the moving water front. A downscaling procedure is developed to determine the evolution of pore-size distribution from the exact solution of a large-scale equation system. To validate the proposed model,the obtained exact solutions are used to treat the laboratory data of LSW flooding in artificial soil-packed columns. The tuning results show that the proposed model yields a considerably higher value of the coefficient of determination, compared with the previous models, indicating that the new model can successfully capture the effect of the moving water front on fines migration and precisely match the effluent history of the detached particles.

Modeling Tracer Flow Characteristics in Different Types of Pores: Visualization and Mathematical Modeling

Structure of porous media and fluid distribution in rocks can significantly affect the transport characteristics during the process of microscale tracer flow.To clarify the effect of micro heterogeneity on aqueous tracer transport,this paper demonstrates microscopic experiments at pore level and proposes an improved mathematical model for tracer transport.The visualization results show a faster tracer movement into movable water than it into bound water,and quicker occupancy in flowing pores than in storage pores caused by the difference of tracer velocity.Moreover,the proposed mathematical model includes the effects of bound water and flowing porosity by applying interstitial flow velocity expression.The new model also distinguishes flowing and storage pores,accounting for different tracer transport mechanisms(dispersion,diffusion and adsorption)in different types of pores.The resulting analytical solution better matches with tracer production data than the standard model.The residual sum of squares(RSS)from the new model is 0.0005,which is 100 times smaller than the RSS from the standard model.The sensitivity analysis indicates that the dispersion coefficient and flowing porosity shows a negative correlation with the tracer breakthrough time and the increasing slope,whereas the superficial velocity and bound water saturation show a positive correlation.