• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.91-104
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• 2008

In tunnels, safety factor concept has been suggested to estimate their stability quantitatively. It is merely limited in the framework of mechanical analysis. However safety factor concept has not been applied in hydro-mechanical coupled analyses due to their modelling complexity. Recently studies on this topic are being actively made. In this study, induced drainage modelling methods for hydro-mechanical coupled analyses are compared and analyzed to estimate safety factor of a subsea tunnel exactly. To this end, methods both controlling hydraulic characteristic of shotcrete and using a drainage well are considered. Sensitivity analysis were carried out on rock class, thickness of shotcrete, and hydraulic properties of rock mass. As the results of this study, it turned out that the induced drainage modelling using a drainage well would give more reliable results than that of controlling hydraulic characteristic of shotcrete in estimating tunnel stability in hydro-mechanical coupled analyses.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.19-33
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• 2016

Stability analysis based on the limit equilibrium method combined with the result of infiltration analysis is commonly used to evaluate the effect of rainfall infiltration on the slope stability. Soil is a three-phase mixture composed of solid particle, water and air. Therefore, a fully coupled mixture theories of stress-deformation behavior and the flow of water and air should be used to accurately analyze the process of rainfall infiltration through soil slope. The purpose of this study is to study the effect of interaction of air and water flow on the mechanical stability of slope. In this study, stability analyses based on the coupled hydro-mechanical model of three-phases were conducted for slope of weathered granite soil widespread in Korea. During the process of hydro-mechanical analysis strength reduction technique was applied to evaluate the effect of rainfall infiltration on the slope stability. The results showed an increase of air pressure during infiltration because rain water continuously displaced the air in the unsaturated zone. Such water-air interaction in the pore space of soil affects the stress-deformation behavior of slope. Therefore, the results from the three-phase model showed different behavior from the solid-water model that ignores the transport effect of air in the pores.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.353-370
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• 2017

This paper presents a case study and numerical investigation to study the hydro-mechanical response of a shallow landslide in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using a coupled model. The coupled model was interpreted in details by expressing the balance equations for soil mixture and the coupled constitutive equations. The coupled model was verified against experimental data from the shearing-infiltration triaxial tests. A real case of shallow landslide occurred on Mt. Umyeonsan, Seoul, Korea was employed to explore the influence of rainfall infiltration on the slope stability during heavy rainfall. Numerical results showed that the coupled model accurately predicted the poromechanical behavior of a rainfall-induced landslide by simultaneously linking seepage and stress-strain problems. It was also found that the coupled model properly described progress failure of a slope in a highly transient condition. Through the comparisons between the coupled and uncoupled models, the coupled model provided more realistic analysis results under rainfall. Consequently, the coupled model was found to be feasible for the stability and seepage analysis of practical engineering problems.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.716-724
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• 2008

In the case of subsea tunnels, hydro-mechanical coupled analysis is necessary for an exact design and construction. The consideration of the overstretched ground condition is also required because they are usually located at the great depth unlike the usual tunnels. Many researches have been performed on the estimation of relaxed rock mass height. However, there have been no researches on the estimation of relaxed rock mass height under overstretched ground conditions. In this study, therefore, hydro-mechanical coupled analyses were performed under the overstressed ground conditions and the relaxed rock mass heights were estimated based on the contour of the local safety factor around a tunnel.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.265-280
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• 2023

Water leakage in tunnels is a defect that can affect tunnel stability and the ground movement by changing the stress and pore water pressure of the surrounding ground. Long-term or large-scale water leaks may lead to damage of tunnel structure and the surrounding environment, such as tunnel lining instability and ground surface settlement. The present study numerically investigated the effects of water leakage on the structural stability of a tunnel and the ground behavior. The tunnel was assumed to be under undrained conditions for preventing the inflow of the surrounding water and leaks occurred in the concrete lining after completion of the tunnel construction. A coupled hydro-mechanical analysis using a TOUGH-FLAC simulator developed in Python was conducted for assessing the leakage induced-behavior of the tunnel structure and ground under different conditions of the amount and location of water leak. Additionally, the effect of hydro-mechanical coupling terms on the results of coupled response was investigated and discussed.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.429-453
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• 2022

Numerical modeling and scenario composition are needed to characterize the geological environment of the disposal site and analyze the long-term evolution of natural barriers. In this study, processes and features of the hydro-mechanical behavior of natural barriers were categorized and represented using the interrelation matrix proposed by SKB and Posiva. A hydro-mechanical coupled model was evaluated for analyzing stress field changes and fracture zone re-activation. The processes corresponding to long-term evolution and the hydro-mechanical mechanisms that may accompany critical processes were identified. Consequently, practical numerical methods could be considered for these geological engineering issues. A case study using a numerical method for the stability analysis of an underground disposal system was performed. Critical stress distribution regime problems were analyzed numerically by considering the strata's movement. Another case focused on the equivalent continuum domain composition under the upscaling process in fractured rocks. Numerical methods and case studies were reviewed, confirming that an appropriate and optimized modeling technique is essential for studying the stress state and geological history of the Korean Peninsula. Considering the environments of potential disposal sites in Korea, selecting the optimal application method that effectively simulates fractured rocks should be prioritized.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.342-351
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• 2010

During the operation of a hydro turbine the fluid mechanical pressure loading on the turbine blades provides the driving torque on the turbine shaft. This fluid loading results in a structural load on the component which in turn causes the turbine blade to deflect. Classically, these mechanical stresses and deflections are calculated by means of finite element analysis (FEA) which applies the pressure distribution on the blade surface calculated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as a major boundary condition. Such an approach can be seen as a one-way coupled simulation of the fluid structure interaction (FSI) problem. In this analysis the reverse influence of the deformation on the fluid is generally neglected. Especially in axial machines the blade deformation can result in a significant impact on the turbine performance. The present paper analyzes this influence by means of fully two-way coupled FSI simulations of a propeller turbine utilizing two different approaches. The configuration has been simulated by coupling the two commercial solvers ANSYS CFX for the fluid mechanical simulation with ANSYS Classic for the structure mechanical simulation. A detailed comparison of the results for various blade stiffness by means of changing Young's Modulus are presented. The influence of the blade deformation on the runner discharge and performance will be discussed and shows for the configuration investigated no significant influence under normal structural conditions. This study also highlights that a two-way coupled fluid structure interaction simulation of a real engineering configuration is still a challenging task for today's commercially available simulation tools.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.335-358
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• 2020

We present a numerical model to simulate coupled hydro-mechanical behavior of fault using TOUGH-FLAC simulator. This study aims to develop a numerical method to estimate fluid injection-induced fault reactivation in low permeability rock and to access the relevant hydro-mechanical stability in rock as part of DECOVALEX-2019 Task B. A coupled fluid flow and mechanical interface model to explicitly represent a fault was suggested and validated from the applications to benchmark simulations and the field experiment at Mont Terri underground laboratory in Switzerland. The pressure build-up, hydraulic aperture evolution, displacement, and stress responses matched those obtained at the site, which indicates the capability of the model to appropriately capture the hydro-mechanical processes in rock fault.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.191-208
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• 2024

In this study, a hydro-mechanical-damage coupled analysis model was developed to evaluate the structural safety of radioactive waste disposal structures. The Mazars damage model, widely used to model the fracture behavior of brittle materials such as rocks or concrete, was coupled with conventional hydro-mechanical analysis and the developed model was verified via theoretical solutions from literature. To derive the numerical input values for damage-coupled analysis, uniaxial compressive strength and Brazilian tensile strength tests were performed on concrete samples made using the mix ratio of the disposal concrete silo cured under dry and saturated conditions. The input factors derived from the laboratory-scale experiments were applied to a two-dimensional finite element model of the concrete silos at the Wolseong Nuclear Environmental Management Center in Gyeongju and numerical analysis was conducted to analyze the effects of damage consideration, analysis technique, and waste loading conditions. The hydro-mechanical-damage coupled model developed in this study will be applied to the long-term behavior and stability analysis of deep geological repositories for high-level radioactive waste disposal.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.423-436
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• 2016

Currently, there is a great interest in the coupling between multiphase fluid flow and geomechanical effects in hydrocarbon reservoirs and surrounding rocks. The ideal solution for this coupled problem is to introduce the geomechanical effects through the stress analysis solution and implement an algorithm, which assures that the equations governing the flow and stress analyses are obeyed in each time step. This paper deals with the implementation of a program (FORTRAN90 interface code), which was developed to couple conventional reservoir (ECLIPSE) and geomechanical (ABAQUS) simulators, using a partial coupling algorithm. The explicit coupled hydro-mechanical behavior of Iranian field during depletion and $CO_2$ injection is studied using the soils consolidation procedure available in ABAQUS. Time dependent reservoir pressure fields obtained from three dimensional compositional reservoir models were transferred into finite element reservoir geomechanical models in ABAQUS as multi-phase flow in deforming reservoirs cannot be performed within ABAQUS. The FEM analysis of the reservoir showed no sign of plastic strain under production and $CO_2$ injection scenarios in any part of the reservoir and the stress paths do not show a critical behavior.