• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.557-558
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• 2011

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.790-799
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• 2010

The Upper Devonian Grossmont Formation in Alberta, Canada reserves an estimated 50 billion cubic meters of bitumen and possess about 1/6 of the total bitumen resources in northern Alberta. However, unlike the overlying Athabasca oil sands, non conventional bitumen resources has not been developed as yet. The carbonate rocks of Grosmont Formation have been subject to various stages of diagenesis, including dolomatization and karstification with a strong effect on the distribution of porosity and permeability, which resulted in highly heterogeneous reservoirs. An extensive fracture logging and mapping was performed on total of six boreholes located in the study area to explore the characteristics of fracture geometry system and the subsurface structures of carbonates reservoir that holds bitumen. Fractal dimension was used as a measure of the statistical homogeneity of the fractured rock masses. The applicability of random Cantor dust, Dc, as a fractal parameter was examined systematically. The statistical homogeneity of fractured carbonates rock masses was investigated in the study area. The structural domains of the rock masses were delineated depthwise according to estimated Dc. The major fracture orientation was dominated by horizontal beddings having dip of $0-20^{\circ}$. Also, fractures having high dip angles existed with relatively low frequency. Three dimensional fracture network modeling for each structural domain has been performed based on fracture orientation and intensity, and some representative conceptual models for carbonates reservoir in the study area has been proposed. The developed subsurface conceptual models will be used to capture the geomechanical characteristics of the carbonates reservoir.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.69-74
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• 2006

Recently, spillways are need to control stable water level for supporting main dams because of floods by unusual change of weather such as Typhoon Rusa. This study has been focused on the amount of leakage through the rock mass distributed fractures and joints under the opened emergency spillway. It is very important to evaluate the amount of leakage as these affect stability of spillway by interaction between effective stress and pore pressure. The commercial program MAFIC has been used for analyzing groundwater flow in fractured rock mass. The results showed that the values of range, average and deviation of leakage were $2.85\sim\;3.79\times10^{-1}$, $3.32\times10^{-1}$ and $1.70\times10^{-2}\;m^3/day/m^2$ respectively. Secondary, we have estimated the effect of grouting after the transmissivity$(T_f)$ of joint 1 as main pathway of leakage known from above results was changed from $1.78\times10^{-7}$ to $1.59\times10^{-9}\;m^2/s$. The results showed that the values of range, average and deviation of leakage were $7.80\times10^{-4}\sim1.53\times10^{-3}$, $1.18\times10^{-3}$ and $1.32\times10^{-4}\;m^3/day/m^2$ respectively. As the result, the amount of leakage after grouting has been decreased by a ratio of 1 to 277.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.585-594
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• 2019

In-situ leaching could be one of the promising mining methods to extract the minerals from deep fractured rock mass. Constrained by the low permeability at depth, however, the performance does not meet the expectation. In fact, the rock mass permeability mainly depends on the pre-existing natural fractures and therefore play a crucial role in in-situ leaching performance. More importantly, fractures have various characteristics, such as aperture, persistence, and density, which have diverse contributions to the promising method. Hence, it is necessary to study the variation of fluid rate versus fracture parameters to enhance in-situ leaching performance. Firstly, the subsurface fractures from the depth of 1500m to 2500m were mapped using the discrete fracture network (DFN) in this paper, and then the numerical model was calibrated at a particular case. On this basis, the fluid flow through fractured rock mass with various fracture characteristics was analyzed. The simulation results showed that with the increase of Fisher' K value, which determine the fracture orientation, the flow rate firstly decreased and then increased. Subsequently, as another critical factor affecting the fluid flow in natural fractures, the fracture transmissivity has a direct relationship with the flow rate. Sensitive study shows that natural fracture characteristics play a critical role in in-situ leaching performance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.481-495
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• 2015

Many hydropower stations in southwest China are located in regions of brittle rock mass with high geo-stresses. Under these conditions deep fractured zones often occur in the sidewalls of the underground caverns of a power station. The theory and methods of fracture and damage mechanics are therefore adopted to study the phenomena. First a flexibility matrix is developed to describe initial geometric imperfections of a jointed rock mass. This model takes into account the area and orientation of the fractured surfaces of multiple joint sets, as well as spacing and density of joints. Using the assumption of the equivalent strain principle, a damage constitutive model is established based on the brittle fracture criterion. In addition the theory of fracture mechanics is applied to analyze the occurrence of secondary cracks during a cavern excavation. The failure criterion, for rock bridge coalescence and the damage evolution equation, has been derived and a new sub-program integrated into the FLAC-3D software. The model has then been applied to the stability analysis of an underground cavern group of a hydropower station in Sichuan province, China. The results of this method are compared with those obtained by using a conventional elasto-plastic model and splitting depth calculated by the splitting failure criterion proposed in a previous study. The results are also compared with the depth of the relaxation and fracture zone in the surrounding rock measured by field monitoring. The distribution of the splitting zone obtained both by the proposed model and by the field monitoring measurements are consistent to the validity of the theory developed herein.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.79-88
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• 2012

Migration tests were performed with conservative tracers in a fractured zone that had a single fracture of about 2.5 m distance at the KURT. To interpret the migration of the tracers in the fractured rock, a solute transport model was developed. A two dimensional variable aperture channel model was adopted to describe the fractured path and hydrology, and a particle tracking method was used for solute transport. The simulation tried not only to develop a migration model of solutes for open flow environments but also to produce ideas for a better understanding of solute behaviours in indefinable fracture zones by comparing them to experimental results. The results of our simulations and experiments are described as elution and breakthrough curves, and are quantified by momentum analysis. The main retardation mechanism of nonsorbing tracers, including matrixdiffusion, was investigated.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.16 no.4 s.63
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• pp.281-287
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• 2006

Intake of groundwater by tunneling in a mountainous area mostly results from groundwater flow through fractured parts of total rock mass. For reasonable analysis of this phenomenon the representative joint groups 1, 2, and 3 have been selected by previous investigations, geological/geophysical field tests and boring works. Three dimensional fractures were generated by the FracMan and MAFIC which is a three dimensional finite element model has been used to analyse a groundwater flow through fractured media. Monte Carlo simulation was applied to reduce the uncertainty of this study. The numerical results showed that the average and deviation of amounts of groundwater intaked into tunnel per unit length were $5.40{\times}10^{-1}$ and $3.04{\times}10^{-1}m^3/min/km$. It is concluded that tunnel would be stable on impact of groundwater environment by tunneling because of the lower value than $2.00{\sim}3.00m^3/min/km$ as previous and present standard on the application of tunnel construction.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.529-538
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• 1993

A stochastic way using continuous time Markov process is presented to model the one-dimensional nuclide transport in fractured rock matrix as an extended study for previous work ［1］. A nuclide migration model by the continuous time Markov process for single planar fractured rock matrix, which is considered as a transient system where a process by which the nuclide is diffused into the rock matrix from the fracture may be no more time homogeneous, is compared with a conventional deterministic analytical solution. The primary desired quantities from a stochastic model are the expected values and variance of the state variables as a function of time. The time-dependent probability distributions of nuclides are presented for each discretized compartment of the medium given intensities of transition. Since this model is discrete in medium space, parameters which affect nuclide transport could be easily incorporated for such heterogeneous media as the fractured rock matrix and the layered porous media. Even though the model developed in this study was shown to be sensitive to the number of discretized compartment showing numerical dispersion as the number of compartments are decreased, with small compensating of dispersion coefficient, the model agrees well to analytical solution.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.155-165
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• 1995

Fluid flow studies of fractured rocks require three-dimensional modeling of the fracture system. The stochastic discrete fracture models constructed by Monte Carlo simulation technique were applied to the analysis of groundwater flow and mass transport in fractured rock for the assessment of tightness criteria of underground LPG storage cavern. The parameters that most affect the conceptual discrete fracture modeling proved either fracture orientation or size and on the fract'lre flow interpretation proved conductive fracture intensity. The fracture transmissivity played important role in solute transport in fractured rock simulated by particle tracking approach. It was partly recognized that the calibrated stochastic discrete fracture model can be used for the tightness criteria of underground LPG storage cavern.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.318-331
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• 2019

A three-dimensional(3D) equivalent continuum modeling was performed to analyze hydraulic behavior of rock mass considering discontinuities by using DFN model and smeared fracture model. DFN model was generated by FLAC3D and smeared fracture model was applied by using FISH functions, which is built-in functions in FLAC3D, for equivalent continuum model of fractured rock mass. Comparative analysis with 3DEC, which is for discontinuum analysis, was conducted to verify reliability of equivalent continuum analysis by using FLAC3D. Similar results of hydraulic analysis under the same conditions could be achieved. Equivalent continuum analysis of fractured rock mass by using DFN model was implemented to compare with existing analytical methods for inflow into the tunnel.