Time Domain Simulation of a One Line Failure for a DP-assisted Mooring System

This paper focuses on the research of a semi-submersible platform equipped with a DP-assisted mooring system. Based on the working principles of the DP-assisted mooring system and the model of the platform motion, a time domain simulation program is applied to analyze the impact, in the case of one line failure, on the platform motion, power consumption of the thrusters and the tension of the mooring lines. The results show that, under the 10-year wind dominant, a one line failure will have little impact on the tension of the mooring lines. When the failure line is windward, the power consumption will increase greatly with a weakened position of accuracy. However when the failure line is leeward, the power consumption will be reduced with a partly strengthened oosition of accuracy.

Dynamic Analysis of Semi-Submersible Production Platform Under the Failure of Mooring Lines

This paper quantitatively studies the transient dynamic response of a semi-submersible production platform with the loss of one or several positioning mooring lines.A semi-submersible platform,production risers,and positioning mooring lines are all included in the numerical simulation.Increased motion of the semi-submersible platform,tension variation of the remaining mooring lines/risers and the risk of mooring line or riser clashing are all investigated through fully coupled time-domain analysis.Combined environmental loads are selected from irregular waves and the steady current varying from very rough to extreme sea conditions.Three dimension radiation/diffraction theories and Morison’s equation are applied to calculate first-order wave force and second-order mean drift force of floating semi-submersible platform.Nonlinear time-domain finite element methods are employed to analyze the behavior of mooring lines and risers.Results show that the failure of mooring lines seriously reduce the platform’s stability performance.The tension of the rest lines is also increased accordingly.Remaining lines which are closer to the failed lines will have larger tension increase to compensate.Line-Line distance provides practical information for the risk of clashing investigation.

A comparison of electromigration failure of metal lines with fracture mechanics

Atoms constructing an interconnecting metal line in a semiconductor device are transported by electron flow in high density. This phenomenon is called electromigration, which may cause the line failure. In order to characterize the electromigration failure, a comparison study is carded out with some typical phenomena treated by fracture mechanics for thin and large structures. An example of thin structures, which have been treated by fracture mechanics, is silica opti- cal fibers for communication systems. The damage growth in a metal line by electromigration is characterized in compar- ison with the crack growth in a silica optical fiber subjected to static fatigue. Also a brief comparison is made between the electromigration failure and some fracture phenomena in large structures.

On the excavation-induced stress drop in damaged coal considering a coupled yield and failure criterion

Investigating the stress drop of abutment pressure is the key to a deep quantitative analysis of the discontinuous stress redistribution under mining.In the present study,uniaxial and triaxial compression tests are carried out separately to determine the bulk and shear moduli,the cohesion,and the internal friction angle of the coal samples.By extending the meaning of Mohr’s circle referring to yield stress instead of the maximum principal stress,a yield line is introduced to illustrate the stress drop of Mohr’s circle referring to yield stress instead of the maximum principal stress at the elastoplastic boundary.Furthermore,a theoretical solution of the stress drop as a function of the damage is proposed to investigate how the abutment pressure differs considering the yield line and failure line.In addition,applying the stress drop at the yield line in non-pillar mining,top coal mining,and protective coal mining shows that the damage has a nonlinearly positive influence on the stress drop.The results shows that the bulk modulus and internal friction angle have a more sensitive influence on the stress drop than do the shear modulus and cohesion.Finally,the stress drop is divided into a discontinuous stress drop at the yield line and a structural stress drop at the failure line.The stress drop is effective in describing the discontinuous stress redistribution and shows a clear difference in the movement direction of Mohr’s circle considering the unloading pressure.

Characteristics of structural loess strength and preliminary framework for joint strength formula

The strength of structural loess consists of the shear strength and tensile strength. In this study, the stress path, the failure envelope of principal stress （ Kf line）, and the strength failure envelope of structurally intact loess and remolded loess were analyzed through three kinds of tests： the tensile strength test, the uniaxial compressive strength test, and the conventional triaxial shear strength test. Then, in order to describe the tensile strength and shear strength of structural loess comprehensively and reasonably, a joint strength formula for structural loess was established. This formula comprehensively considers tensile and shear properties. Studies have shown that the tensile strength exhibits a decreasing trend with increasing water content. When the water content is constant, the tensile strength of the structurally intact soil is greater than that ofremolded soil. In the studies, no loss of the originally cured cohesion in the structurally intact soil samples was observed, given that the soil samples did not experience loading disturbance during the uniaxial compressive strength test, meaning there is a high initial structural strength. The results of the conventional triaxial shear strength test show that the water content is correlated with the strength of the structural loess. When the water content is low, the structural properties are strong, and when the water content is high, the structural properties are weak, which means that the water content and the ambient pressure have significant effects on the stress-strain relationship of structural loess. The established joint strength formula of structural loess effectively avoids overestimating the role of soil tensile strength in the traditional theory of Mohr-Coulomb strength.

TOPOLOGY AND CASCADING LINE OUTAGES IN POWER GRIDS

Motivated by the small world network research of Watts ＆ Strogatz, this paper studies relationships between topology and cascading line outages in electric power grids. Cascading line outages are a type of cascading collapse that can occur in power grids when the transmission network is congested. It is characterized by a self-sustaining sequence of line outages followed by grid breakup, which generally leads to widespread blackout. The main findings of this work are twofold： On one hand, the work suggests that topologies with more disorder in their interconnection topology tend to be robust with respect to cascading line outages in the sense of being able to support greater generation and demand levels than more regularly interconnected topologies. On the other hand, the work suggests that topologies with more disorder tend to be more fragile in that should a cascade get started, they tend to break apart after fewer outages than more regularly interconnected topologies. Thus, as has been observed in other complex networks, there appears to be a tradeoff between robustness and fragility. These results were established using synthetically generated power grid topologies and verified using the IEEE 57 bus and 188 bus power grid test cases.