Experimental investigation on rainfall infiltration and solute transport in layered porous and fractured media

Layered structures with upper porous and lower fractured media are widely distributed in the world. An experimen- tal investigation on rainfall infiltration and solute transport in such layered structures can provide the necessary foundation for effectively preventing and forecasting water bursting in mines, controlling contamination of mine water, and accomplishing ecological restoration of mining areas. A typical physical model of the layered structures with porous and fractured media was created in this study. Then rainfall infiltration experiments were conducted after salt solution was sprayed on the surface of the layered structure. The volumetric water content and concentration of chlorine ions at different specified positions along the profile of the experiment system were measured in real-time. The experimental results showed that the lower fractured media, with a considerably higher permeability than that of the upper porous media, had significant effects on preventing water infil- tration. Moreover, although the porous media were homogeneous statistically in the whole domain, spatial variations in the features of effluent concentrations with regards to time, or so called breakthrough curves, at various sampling points located at the horizontal plane in the porous media near the porous-fractured interface were observed, indicating the diversity of solute transport at small scales. Furthermore, the breakthrough curves of the outflow at the bottom, located beneath the underlying fractured rock, were able to capture and integrate features of the breakthrough curves of both the upper porous and fractured media, which exhibited multiple peaks, while the peak values were reduced one by one with time.

On the physical model of earthquake precursor fields and the mechanism of precursors＇timespace distribution──origin and evidences of the strong body earthquake──generating model

According to the requirement of the project 'Establishment of the Physical Model of Earthquake PrecursorFields',this paper elucidates the train of thinking for research on the project and some scientific problems whichmust be studied i, the elucidation emphasizes that the core of this project is to study the conditions and processesof the generation of strong earthquakes. The paper first outlines the origin and development of the'strong-bodyearthquake-generating model' proposed by the author in the 1980;and then proves the reasonableness of themodel from three aspects, namely: deep structures, mechanical analysis and rock fracture experiments. Bystudying the tomographic image for the northern part of North China, it can be seen that the sources of strongearthquakes are all distributed in high-velocity bodies,or in the contact zone between high-velocity and lowvelocity bodies but nearer to the high-velocity body. It has been affirmed through studies of the mechanical modelsof hard and soft inclusions that the existence of a hard inclusion is an imPOrtant condition for the high concentration of large amounts of strain energy. A lot of theoretical and experimental studies have been made to investigate the conditions for rock instability; the results have consistently indicated that rock instability,sudden fracture and stress drop would be possible only if the stiffness of the source body is greater than the environmentalstiffness.

Impact toughness of a gradient hardened layer of Cr5Mo1V steel treated by laser shock peening

Laser shock peening（LSP） is a widely used surface treatment technique that can effectively improve the fatigue life and impact toughness of metal parts.Cr5Mo1 V steel exhibits a gradient hardened layer after a LSP process.A new method is proposed to estimate the impact toughness that considers the changing mechanical properties in the gradient hardened layer.Assuming a linearly gradient distribution of impact toughness,the parameters controlling the impact toughness of the gradient hardened layer were given.The influence of laser power densities and the number of laser shots on the impact toughness were investigated.The impact toughness of the laser peened layer improves compared with an untreated specimen,and the impact toughness increases with the laser power densities and decreases with the number of laser shots.Through the fracture morphology analysis by a scanning electron microscope,we established that the Cr5Mo1 V steel was fractured by the cleavage fracture mechanism combined with a few dimples.The increase in the impact toughness of the material after LSP is observed because of the decreased dimension and increased fraction of the cleavage fracture in the gradient hardened layer.