The shear wave(S-wave) component of the total blast vibration always plays an important role in damage to rock or adjacent structures.Numerical approach has been considered as an economical and effective tool in predi...The shear wave(S-wave) component of the total blast vibration always plays an important role in damage to rock or adjacent structures.Numerical approach has been considered as an economical and effective tool in predicting blast vibration.However,S-wave has not yet attracted enough attention in previous numerical simulations.In this paper,three typical numerical models,i.e.the continuum-based elastic model,the continuum-based damage model,and the coupled smooth particle hydrodynamics(SPH)-finite element method(FEM) model,were first introduced and developed to simulate the blasting of a single cylindrical charge.Then,the numerical results from different models were evaluated based on a review on the generation mechanisms of S-wave during blasting.Finally,some suggestions on the selection of numerical approaches for simulating generation of the blast-induced S-wave were put forward.Results indicate that different numerical models produce different results of S-wave.The coupled numerical model was the best,for its outstanding capacity in producing S-wave component.It is suggested that the model that can describe the cracking,sliding or heaving of rock mass,and the movement of fragments near the borehole should be selected preferentially,and priority should be given to the material constitutive law that could record the nonlinear mechanical behavior of rock mass near the borehole.展开更多
Coal burst is caused by a dynamic and unstable release of energy within the overstressed rock mass/coal during the mining process.Although the occurrence of coal burst is a result of the complex impacts of many factor...Coal burst is caused by a dynamic and unstable release of energy within the overstressed rock mass/coal during the mining process.Although the occurrence of coal burst is a result of the complex impacts of many factors,a major component of coal burst mechanism is associated with energy storage and release.This study reviewed the sources of energy that can contribute to a coal burst,principally strain and potential energy stored in the coal mass around excavations,and radiated seismic energy released by geological discontinuities.The energy balance concept proposed by[1]was utilised in numerical modellings to compute the radiated seismic energy in a modelling system and the kinetic energy of ejected rock/coal for a given burst scenario.The modelling results showed that the strain energy density(SED)around excavations increases with increasing mining depth and the maximum SED area migrates deeper into the coal.For the effect of geological features on both roadway and longwall face,the coal burst risk proneness can be assessed considering the proposed energy terms.According to the results of energy changes in excavations,the modelling predicts that for depths of ejection 2 m and 3 m the kinetic energy of a burst increases as the mining depth increases from 100 m to 1000 m,but for depth of ejection 1 m only increases until mining depth reaches 700 m and then decreases.The proposed energy-based model indicators can deepen the understanding of energy changes and the associated coal burst risks for different mining conditions.展开更多
The deformation and fracture evolution mechanisms of the strata overlying mines mined using sublevel caving were studied via numerical simulations.Moreover,an expression for the normal force acting on the side face of...The deformation and fracture evolution mechanisms of the strata overlying mines mined using sublevel caving were studied via numerical simulations.Moreover,an expression for the normal force acting on the side face of a steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beam in the surrounding rock was deduced based on limit equilibrium theory.The results show the following:(1)surface displacement above metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities shows significant step characteristics,and(2)the behavior of the strata as they fail exhibits superimposition characteristics.Generally,failure first occurs in certain superimposed strata slightly far from the goaf.Subsequently,with the constant downward excavation of the orebody,the superimposed strata become damaged both upwards away from and downwards toward the goaf.This process continues until the deep part of the steeply dipping superimposed strata forms a large-scale deep fracture plane that connects with the goaf.The deep fracture plane generally makes an angle of 12°-20°with the normal to the steeply dipping discontinuities.The effect of the constant outward transfer of strata movement due to the constant outward failure of the superimposed strata in the metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities causes the scope of the strata movement in these mines to be larger than expected.The strata in the metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities mainly show flexural toppling failure.However,the steeply dipping structural strata near the goaf mainly exhibit shear slipping failure,in which case the mechanical model used to describe them can be simplified by treating them as steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beams.By taking the steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beam that first experiences failure as the key stratum,the failure scope of the strata(and criteria for the stability of metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities mined using sublevel caving)can be obtained via iterative computations from the key stratum,moving downward toward and upwards away from the goaf.展开更多
Deep in-situ rock mechanics considers the influence of the in-situ environment on mechanical properties,differentiating it from traditional rock mechanics.To investigate the effect of in-situ stress,pore pressure pres...Deep in-situ rock mechanics considers the influence of the in-situ environment on mechanical properties,differentiating it from traditional rock mechanics.To investigate the effect of in-situ stress,pore pressure preserved environment on the mechanical difference of sandstone,four tests are numerically modeled by COMSOL:conventional triaxial test,conventional pore pressure test,in-situ stress restoration and reconstruction test,and in-situ pore pressure-preserved test(not yet realized in the laboratory).The in-situ stress restoration parameter is introduced to characterize the recovery effect of in-situ stress on elastic modulus and heterogeneous distribution of sandstone at different depths.A random function and nonuniform pore pressure coefficient are employed to describe the non-uniform distribution of pore pressure in the in-situ environment.Numerical results are compared with existing experimental data to validate the models and calibrate the numerical parameters.By extracting mechanical parameters from numerical cores,the stress-strain curves of the four tests under different depths,in-situ stress and pore pressure are compared.The influence of non-uniform pore pressure coefficient and depth on the peak strength of sandstone is analyzed.The results show a strong linear relationship between the in-situ stress restoration parameter and depth,effectively characterizing the enhanced effect of stress restoration and reconstruction methods on the elastic modulus of conventional cores at different depths.The in-situ pore pressurepreserved test exhibits lower peak stress and peak strain compared to the other three tests,and sandstone subjected to non-uniform pore pressure is more prone to plastic damage and failure.Moreover,the influence of non-uniform pore pressure on peak strength gradually diminished with increasing depth.展开更多
In this paper, we have used two reliable approaches (theorems) to find the optimal solutions to transportation problems, using variations in costs. In real-life scenarios, transportation costs can fluctuate due to dif...In this paper, we have used two reliable approaches (theorems) to find the optimal solutions to transportation problems, using variations in costs. In real-life scenarios, transportation costs can fluctuate due to different factors. Finding optimal solutions to the transportation problem in the context of variations in cost is vital for ensuring cost efficiency, resource allocation, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, environmental responsibility, risk mitigation, and operational fortitude in practical situations. This paper opens up new directions for the solution of transportation problems by introducing two key theorems. By using these theorems, we can develop an algorithm for identifying the optimal solution attributes and permitting accurate quantification of changes in overall transportation costs through the addition or subtraction of constants to specific rows or columns, as well as multiplication by constants inside the cost matrix. It is anticipated that the two reliable techniques presented in this study will provide theoretical insights and practical solutions to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of transportation systems. Finally, numerical illustrations are presented to verify the proposed approaches.展开更多
Under the direction of the principle of interaction between plastic volumetric and shear strains, the general expression of constitutive relation for geotechnical materials has been derived within the framework of irr...Under the direction of the principle of interaction between plastic volumetric and shear strains, the general expression of constitutive relation for geotechnical materials has been derived within the framework of irreversible thermo- dynamics. The constitutive modeling, in fact, is an inverse problem that belongs to the medium inverse problems of model identification, which is expressed as a reversion of coefficient of differential equation. Thus the constitutive modeling of geotechnical materials will become the reversion of coefficient functions of the general expression of constitutive relation, which is carried out in the stress field (p,q) by means Of numerical techniques, so that is called numerical modeling. Applying the numerical modeling, a number of plasticity-based models for clay and sand have been obtained, which are able to characterize the fundamental features of deformation for geotechnieal materials. In addition, the approach of numerical modeling also can be applied to the situation of unsaturated soils by means of the Bishop's effective stress formula and Khalili's expression of effective stress parameter.展开更多
The kinematic redundancy in a robot leads to an infinite number of solutions for inverse kinematics, which implies the possibility to select a 'best' solution according to an optimization criterion. In this pa...The kinematic redundancy in a robot leads to an infinite number of solutions for inverse kinematics, which implies the possibility to select a 'best' solution according to an optimization criterion. In this paper, two optimization objective functions are proposed, aiming at either minimizing extra degrees of freedom (DOFs) or minimizing the total potential energy of a multilink redundant robot. Physical constraints of either equality or inequality types are taken into consideration in the objective functions. Since the closed-form solutions do not exist in general for highly nonlinear and constrained optimization problems, we adopt and develop two numerical methods, which are verified to be effective and precise in solving the two optimization problems associated with the redundant inverse kinematics. We first verify that the well established trajectory following method can precisely solve the two optimization problems, but is computation intensive. To reduce the computation time, a sequential approach that combines the sequential quadratic programming and iterative Newton-Raphson algorithm is developed. A 4-DOF Fujitsu Hoap-1 humanoid robot arm is used as a prototype to validate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization solutions.展开更多
In this paper, the light trapping characteristics of glass substrate with hemisphere pit (HP) arrays in thin film Si solar cells are theoretically studied via a numerical approach. It is found that the HP glass subs...In this paper, the light trapping characteristics of glass substrate with hemisphere pit (HP) arrays in thin film Si solar cells are theoretically studied via a numerical approach. It is found that the HP glass substrate has good antireflection properties. Its surface reflectance can be reduced by - 50% compared with planar glass. The HP arrays can make the unabsorbed light return to the absorbing layer of solar cells, and the ratio of second absorption approximately equals 30%. Thus, the glass substrate with the hemisphere pit arrays (HP glass) can effectively reduce the total reflectivity of a solar celt from 20% to 13%. The lip glass can also prolong the optical path length. The numerical results show that the total optical path length of the thin film Si solar cell covered with the HP glass increases from 2ω to 409. These results are basically consistent with the experimental results.展开更多
The structure-preserving features of the nonlinear stochastic models are positivity,dynamical consistency and boundedness.These features have a significant role in different fields of computational biology and many mo...The structure-preserving features of the nonlinear stochastic models are positivity,dynamical consistency and boundedness.These features have a significant role in different fields of computational biology and many more.Unfortunately,the existing stochastic approaches in literature do not restore aforesaid structure-preserving features,particularly for the stochastic models.Therefore,these gaps should be occupied up in literature,by constructing the structure-preserving features preserving numerical approach.This writing aims to describe the structure-preserving dynamics of the stochastic model.We have analysed the effect of reproduction number in stochastic modelling the same as described in the literature for deterministic modelling.The usual explicit stochastic numerical approaches are time-dependent.We have developed the implicitly driven explicit approach for the stochastic epidemic model.We have proved that the newly developed approach is preserving the structural,dynamical properties as positivity,boundedness and dynamical consistency.Finally,convergence analysis of a newly developed approach and graphically illustration is also presented.展开更多
The purpose of the study is to assess what the influence of the distance of the gap is between the wing and slotted flap on the aerodynamic characteristics of ultra-light aircraft wing when the flap is retracted. It h...The purpose of the study is to assess what the influence of the distance of the gap is between the wing and slotted flap on the aerodynamic characteristics of ultra-light aircraft wing when the flap is retracted. It has been elected numerical approach to the study and it is been realized through applied numerical model of the wing airfoil NACA 2412 for three different lengths of slotted gap size, whose length is expressed as percentages of the airfoil chord. The code ANSYS FLUENT has been applied, as it has been determined RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) equations and DES (detached-eddy simulation) turbulent model has been used.展开更多
Quantum discord in any mixture of two bi-qubit arbitrary product states is studied with two different approaches. In the first approach the maximM classicM correlations are obtained via numerical computations, while i...Quantum discord in any mixture of two bi-qubit arbitrary product states is studied with two different approaches. In the first approach the maximM classicM correlations are obtained via numerical computations, while in the second approach they are analytically derived. Quantum correlations captured with both approaches completely coincide, as is in accord with the conclusion of Cen et al. [Phys. Rev. A 83 (2011) 054101]. The symmetry reduction of the concerned states concerning quantum correlations is accomplished. The captured discords are amply analyzed so that some inherent distinct properties are revealed.展开更多
The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitati...The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitational potential of a prism. Discrete element method can be used to determine the gravitational potential of a prism, and can approximate the true gravitational potential values with sufficient accuracy (the smaller each element is, the more accurate the result is). Although Nagy's approach provided a closed expression, one does not know whether it is valid, due to the fact that this approach has not been confirmed in literatures. In this paper, a study on the comparison of Nagy's approach with discrete element method is presented. The results show that Nagy's formulas for determining the gravitational potential of a prism are valid in the domain both inside and outside the prism.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China(973 Program)(Grant No.2011CB013501)the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China(Grant No.51125037)
文摘The shear wave(S-wave) component of the total blast vibration always plays an important role in damage to rock or adjacent structures.Numerical approach has been considered as an economical and effective tool in predicting blast vibration.However,S-wave has not yet attracted enough attention in previous numerical simulations.In this paper,three typical numerical models,i.e.the continuum-based elastic model,the continuum-based damage model,and the coupled smooth particle hydrodynamics(SPH)-finite element method(FEM) model,were first introduced and developed to simulate the blasting of a single cylindrical charge.Then,the numerical results from different models were evaluated based on a review on the generation mechanisms of S-wave during blasting.Finally,some suggestions on the selection of numerical approaches for simulating generation of the blast-induced S-wave were put forward.Results indicate that different numerical models produce different results of S-wave.The coupled numerical model was the best,for its outstanding capacity in producing S-wave component.It is suggested that the model that can describe the cracking,sliding or heaving of rock mass,and the movement of fragments near the borehole should be selected preferentially,and priority should be given to the material constitutive law that could record the nonlinear mechanical behavior of rock mass near the borehole.
基金Australian Coal Industry's Research Program.Grant/Project Number:C26066.
文摘Coal burst is caused by a dynamic and unstable release of energy within the overstressed rock mass/coal during the mining process.Although the occurrence of coal burst is a result of the complex impacts of many factors,a major component of coal burst mechanism is associated with energy storage and release.This study reviewed the sources of energy that can contribute to a coal burst,principally strain and potential energy stored in the coal mass around excavations,and radiated seismic energy released by geological discontinuities.The energy balance concept proposed by[1]was utilised in numerical modellings to compute the radiated seismic energy in a modelling system and the kinetic energy of ejected rock/coal for a given burst scenario.The modelling results showed that the strain energy density(SED)around excavations increases with increasing mining depth and the maximum SED area migrates deeper into the coal.For the effect of geological features on both roadway and longwall face,the coal burst risk proneness can be assessed considering the proposed energy terms.According to the results of energy changes in excavations,the modelling predicts that for depths of ejection 2 m and 3 m the kinetic energy of a burst increases as the mining depth increases from 100 m to 1000 m,but for depth of ejection 1 m only increases until mining depth reaches 700 m and then decreases.The proposed energy-based model indicators can deepen the understanding of energy changes and the associated coal burst risks for different mining conditions.
基金Financial support for this work was provided by the Youth Fund Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42002292)the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42377175)the General Program of the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China (No. 2023AFB631)
文摘The deformation and fracture evolution mechanisms of the strata overlying mines mined using sublevel caving were studied via numerical simulations.Moreover,an expression for the normal force acting on the side face of a steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beam in the surrounding rock was deduced based on limit equilibrium theory.The results show the following:(1)surface displacement above metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities shows significant step characteristics,and(2)the behavior of the strata as they fail exhibits superimposition characteristics.Generally,failure first occurs in certain superimposed strata slightly far from the goaf.Subsequently,with the constant downward excavation of the orebody,the superimposed strata become damaged both upwards away from and downwards toward the goaf.This process continues until the deep part of the steeply dipping superimposed strata forms a large-scale deep fracture plane that connects with the goaf.The deep fracture plane generally makes an angle of 12°-20°with the normal to the steeply dipping discontinuities.The effect of the constant outward transfer of strata movement due to the constant outward failure of the superimposed strata in the metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities causes the scope of the strata movement in these mines to be larger than expected.The strata in the metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities mainly show flexural toppling failure.However,the steeply dipping structural strata near the goaf mainly exhibit shear slipping failure,in which case the mechanical model used to describe them can be simplified by treating them as steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beams.By taking the steeply dipping superimposed cantilever beam that first experiences failure as the key stratum,the failure scope of the strata(and criteria for the stability of metal mines with steeply dipping discontinuities mined using sublevel caving)can be obtained via iterative computations from the key stratum,moving downward toward and upwards away from the goaf.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.51827901 and 52121003)the 111 Project(No.B14006)+1 种基金the Yueqi Outstanding Scholar Program of CUMTB(No.2017A03)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.2022YJSNY13).
文摘Deep in-situ rock mechanics considers the influence of the in-situ environment on mechanical properties,differentiating it from traditional rock mechanics.To investigate the effect of in-situ stress,pore pressure preserved environment on the mechanical difference of sandstone,four tests are numerically modeled by COMSOL:conventional triaxial test,conventional pore pressure test,in-situ stress restoration and reconstruction test,and in-situ pore pressure-preserved test(not yet realized in the laboratory).The in-situ stress restoration parameter is introduced to characterize the recovery effect of in-situ stress on elastic modulus and heterogeneous distribution of sandstone at different depths.A random function and nonuniform pore pressure coefficient are employed to describe the non-uniform distribution of pore pressure in the in-situ environment.Numerical results are compared with existing experimental data to validate the models and calibrate the numerical parameters.By extracting mechanical parameters from numerical cores,the stress-strain curves of the four tests under different depths,in-situ stress and pore pressure are compared.The influence of non-uniform pore pressure coefficient and depth on the peak strength of sandstone is analyzed.The results show a strong linear relationship between the in-situ stress restoration parameter and depth,effectively characterizing the enhanced effect of stress restoration and reconstruction methods on the elastic modulus of conventional cores at different depths.The in-situ pore pressurepreserved test exhibits lower peak stress and peak strain compared to the other three tests,and sandstone subjected to non-uniform pore pressure is more prone to plastic damage and failure.Moreover,the influence of non-uniform pore pressure on peak strength gradually diminished with increasing depth.
文摘In this paper, we have used two reliable approaches (theorems) to find the optimal solutions to transportation problems, using variations in costs. In real-life scenarios, transportation costs can fluctuate due to different factors. Finding optimal solutions to the transportation problem in the context of variations in cost is vital for ensuring cost efficiency, resource allocation, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, environmental responsibility, risk mitigation, and operational fortitude in practical situations. This paper opens up new directions for the solution of transportation problems by introducing two key theorems. By using these theorems, we can develop an algorithm for identifying the optimal solution attributes and permitting accurate quantification of changes in overall transportation costs through the addition or subtraction of constants to specific rows or columns, as well as multiplication by constants inside the cost matrix. It is anticipated that the two reliable techniques presented in this study will provide theoretical insights and practical solutions to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of transportation systems. Finally, numerical illustrations are presented to verify the proposed approaches.
文摘Under the direction of the principle of interaction between plastic volumetric and shear strains, the general expression of constitutive relation for geotechnical materials has been derived within the framework of irreversible thermo- dynamics. The constitutive modeling, in fact, is an inverse problem that belongs to the medium inverse problems of model identification, which is expressed as a reversion of coefficient of differential equation. Thus the constitutive modeling of geotechnical materials will become the reversion of coefficient functions of the general expression of constitutive relation, which is carried out in the stress field (p,q) by means Of numerical techniques, so that is called numerical modeling. Applying the numerical modeling, a number of plasticity-based models for clay and sand have been obtained, which are able to characterize the fundamental features of deformation for geotechnieal materials. In addition, the approach of numerical modeling also can be applied to the situation of unsaturated soils by means of the Bishop's effective stress formula and Khalili's expression of effective stress parameter.
文摘The kinematic redundancy in a robot leads to an infinite number of solutions for inverse kinematics, which implies the possibility to select a 'best' solution according to an optimization criterion. In this paper, two optimization objective functions are proposed, aiming at either minimizing extra degrees of freedom (DOFs) or minimizing the total potential energy of a multilink redundant robot. Physical constraints of either equality or inequality types are taken into consideration in the objective functions. Since the closed-form solutions do not exist in general for highly nonlinear and constrained optimization problems, we adopt and develop two numerical methods, which are verified to be effective and precise in solving the two optimization problems associated with the redundant inverse kinematics. We first verify that the well established trajectory following method can precisely solve the two optimization problems, but is computation intensive. To reduce the computation time, a sequential approach that combines the sequential quadratic programming and iterative Newton-Raphson algorithm is developed. A 4-DOF Fujitsu Hoap-1 humanoid robot arm is used as a prototype to validate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization solutions.
基金Project supported by the National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China(Grant No.2011AA050518)
文摘In this paper, the light trapping characteristics of glass substrate with hemisphere pit (HP) arrays in thin film Si solar cells are theoretically studied via a numerical approach. It is found that the HP glass substrate has good antireflection properties. Its surface reflectance can be reduced by - 50% compared with planar glass. The HP arrays can make the unabsorbed light return to the absorbing layer of solar cells, and the ratio of second absorption approximately equals 30%. Thus, the glass substrate with the hemisphere pit arrays (HP glass) can effectively reduce the total reflectivity of a solar celt from 20% to 13%. The lip glass can also prolong the optical path length. The numerical results show that the total optical path length of the thin film Si solar cell covered with the HP glass increases from 2ω to 409. These results are basically consistent with the experimental results.
基金The authors are grateful to Vice-Chancellor,Air University,Islamabad for providing an excellent research environment and facilities.The first author also thanks Prince Sultan University for funding this work through research-group number RG-DES2017-01-17.
文摘The structure-preserving features of the nonlinear stochastic models are positivity,dynamical consistency and boundedness.These features have a significant role in different fields of computational biology and many more.Unfortunately,the existing stochastic approaches in literature do not restore aforesaid structure-preserving features,particularly for the stochastic models.Therefore,these gaps should be occupied up in literature,by constructing the structure-preserving features preserving numerical approach.This writing aims to describe the structure-preserving dynamics of the stochastic model.We have analysed the effect of reproduction number in stochastic modelling the same as described in the literature for deterministic modelling.The usual explicit stochastic numerical approaches are time-dependent.We have developed the implicitly driven explicit approach for the stochastic epidemic model.We have proved that the newly developed approach is preserving the structural,dynamical properties as positivity,boundedness and dynamical consistency.Finally,convergence analysis of a newly developed approach and graphically illustration is also presented.
文摘The purpose of the study is to assess what the influence of the distance of the gap is between the wing and slotted flap on the aerodynamic characteristics of ultra-light aircraft wing when the flap is retracted. It has been elected numerical approach to the study and it is been realized through applied numerical model of the wing airfoil NACA 2412 for three different lengths of slotted gap size, whose length is expressed as percentages of the airfoil chord. The code ANSYS FLUENT has been applied, as it has been determined RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) equations and DES (detached-eddy simulation) turbulent model has been used.
基金Supported by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education under Grant Nos.20103401110007,20123401110008the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.10975001,11375011,51072002,and 51272003+1 种基金the Program for Excellent Talents at the University of Guangdong Province(Guangdong Teacher Letter[1010]No.79)the 211 Project of Anhui University
文摘Quantum discord in any mixture of two bi-qubit arbitrary product states is studied with two different approaches. In the first approach the maximM classicM correlations are obtained via numerical computations, while in the second approach they are analytically derived. Quantum correlations captured with both approaches completely coincide, as is in accord with the conclusion of Cen et al. [Phys. Rev. A 83 (2011) 054101]. The symmetry reduction of the concerned states concerning quantum correlations is accomplished. The captured discords are amply analyzed so that some inherent distinct properties are revealed.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.40637034, 40974015)the National 863 Program of China (No.2006AA12Z211)
文摘The determination of the gravitational potential of a prism plays an important role in physical geodesy and geophysics. However, there are few literatures that provide accurate approaches for determining the gravitational potential of a prism. Discrete element method can be used to determine the gravitational potential of a prism, and can approximate the true gravitational potential values with sufficient accuracy (the smaller each element is, the more accurate the result is). Although Nagy's approach provided a closed expression, one does not know whether it is valid, due to the fact that this approach has not been confirmed in literatures. In this paper, a study on the comparison of Nagy's approach with discrete element method is presented. The results show that Nagy's formulas for determining the gravitational potential of a prism are valid in the domain both inside and outside the prism.