• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.705-712
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• 2000

The fluid generally flows through fractures in crystalline rocks where most of underground storage facilities are constructed because of their low hydraulic conductivities. The fractured rock is better to be conceptualized with a discrete fracture concept, rather continuum approach. In the aspect of fluid flow in underground, the simultaneous flow of groundwater and gas should be considered in the cases of generation and leakage of gas in nuclear waste disposal facilities, air sparging process and soil vapor extraction for eliminating contaminants in soil or rock pore, and pneumatic fracturing for the improvement of permeability of rock mass. For the purpose of appropriate analysis of groundwater-gas flow, this study presents an unsteady-state multi-phase FEM fracture network simulator. Numerical simulation has been also conducted to investigate the hydraulic head distribution and air tightness around Ulsan LPG storage cavern. The recorded hydraulic head at the observation well Y was -5 to -10 m. From the results obtained by the developed model, it shows that the discrete fracture model yielded hydraulic head of -10 m, whereas great discrepancy with the field data was observed in the case of equivalent continuum modeling. The air tightness of individual fractures around cavern was examined according to two different operating pressures and as a result, only several numbers of fractures neighboring the cavern did not satisfy the criteria of air tightness at 882 kPa of cavern pressure. In the meantime, when operating pressure is 710.5 kPa, the most areas did not satisfy air tightness criteria. Finally, in the case of gas leaking from cavern to the surrounding rocks, the resulted hydraulic head and flowing pattern was changed and, therefore, gas was leaked out from the cavern ceiling and groundwater was flowed into the cavern through the walls.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.223-235
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• 2020

In this study, pulse tests were undertaken at an underground research facility, as part of in-situ hydraulic tests, to derive the hydrogeological characteristics of crystalline rock. The applicability of pulse tests for estimating the transmissivity of a fractured rock mass was evaluated by comparing the results to those from a slug test. Results from the pulse and slug tests were very similar for the test section, with both tests indicating low transmissivity. A slight difference between the results of pulse and slug tests, however, was observed in the section with the transmissivity larger than 1 × 10^-8 ㎡/s, which is likely due to the difference in the radii of influence of the tests. Furthermore, when the pulse test was conducted in permeable zones where transmissivity was larger than 1 × 10^-7 ㎡/s, it was difficult to produce accurate results. This lack of accuracy was due to the rapid recovery of the hydraulic head in these permeable test zones. When performing pulse tests, it was important to accurately measure the pressure when valves were opened and closed in order to apply the head change in the test section. Although it is difficult to derive the hydrogeological characteristics from pulse tests in areas with high permeability, these tests can be used as an economical test method for identifying hydrogeological characteristics in a relatively short time, especially when deriving the transmissivity of rocks with low permeability.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.319-332
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• 2002

This study is focused on the characterization of an effective hydraulic conductivity in each hydrogeologic unit assumed as an equivalent continuum medium in the granitic area. Four boreholes of 3" diameter were installed and a Multi-packer system was facilitated in the selected borehole. Various in-situ tests including the fracture logging, constant injection and fall-off tests, slug and pulse tests were carried out. A hydrogeologic unit was defined into the upper and lower zones based on the variation of fracture properties and hydraulic conductivities. The difference of the result obtained by the various hydraulic tests and the effective characterization techniques on rock mass permeability are also discussed. The effective hydraulic conductivity of the upper unit was measured by two times(5.27E-10 m/s~7.57E-10 m/s) that of the lower unit(2.45E-10 m/s~6.81E-10 m/s)through the constant injection and fall-off tests.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.213-220
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• 2010

The permeability characterization on the natural barrier for deep geological disposal of radioactive waste is very critical to evaluate total safety and performance assessment of disposal site. However, the confidence level in using previous hydraulic testing equipments consist of simple components to estimate rock mass permeability is not high enough to reflect in situ condition. The purpose of this research is to establish an advanced hydraulic testing equipment, which is applicable to deep borehole (up to 1,000 m), through the improvement of technical problems of previous packer systems. Especially, the straddle packer hydraulic testing equipment was designed to adopt both the hydraulic downhole shut-in valve(H-DHSIV) to minimize the wellbore storage effect and the real time data acquisition system to measure the pressure changes of test interval including its upper and lower parts. The results from this research lead to not only improve current technical level in the field of hydraulic testing but also provide important information to radioactive waste disposal technology development and site characterization project.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.107-118
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• 2006

Among a variety of influencing components, time-variant seepage and long-term underground motion are important to understand the abnormal behavior of tunnels. Excessiveness of these two components could be the direct cause of severe damage on tunnels, however, it is not easy to quantify the effect of these on the behavior of tunnels. These parameters can be estimated by using inverse methods once the appropriate relationship between inputs and results is clarified. Various inverse methods or parameter estimation techniques such as artificial neural network and least square method can be used depending on the characteristics of given problems. Numerical analyses, experiments, or monitoring results are frequently used to prepare a set of inputs and results to establish the back analysis models. In this study, a back analysis method has been developed to estimate geotechnically hard-to-known parameters such as permeability of tunnel filter, underground water table, long-term rock mass load, size of damaged zone associated with seepage and long-term underground motion. The artificial neural network technique is adopted and the numerical models developed in the first part are used to prepare a set of data for learning process. Tunnel behavior, especially the displacements of the lining, has been exclusively investigated for the back analysis.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.471-481
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• 2007

The Landslide in natural slope is occurred mostly by a heavy rain of the summer. This landslide is influenced in soil property of the surface than the rock mass. Soils in natural slope are created by weathering phenomena of the bedrock. These soils differed to the geological conditions such as sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock and volcanic rock. Therefore, estimation of landslide in natural slope is the most important analysis of the bedrock distributions and soil characteristics. This study analyzed the soil property to the natural slopes of Busan area where is distributed to volcanic rock, granite and sedimentary rock. Soil sample conducted various soil tests for estimate the soil physical property and soil engineering characteristics, and analysis of the correlation of geological conditions. In the experiment result, soils were mainly classified by a clayey sand. It is also established that $1.07{\sim}1.99kg/cm^3$ for wet density, $28.2{\sim}39.6^{\circ}$ for angle of shearing resistance, and $8.10{\times}10^{-5}{\sim}8.38{\times}10^{-2}cm/sec$ for coefficient of permeability. From the physical parameter, the soils are estimated to the permeable ground with good shear strength, and soil properties are showed a differential tendency for each geological condition.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.29-46
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• 2004

It is important to identify geometries of fracture that act as a conduit of fluid flow for characterization of ground water flow in fractured rock. Fracture geometries control hydraulic conductivity and stream lines in a rock mass. However, we have difficulties to acquire whole geometric data of fractures in a field scale because of discontinuous distribution of outcrops and impossibility of continuous collecting of subsurface data. Therefore, it is needed to develop a method to describe whole feature of a target fracture geometry. This study suggests a new approach to develop a method to characterize on the whole feature of a target fracture geometry based on the Fourier transform. After sampling of specimens along a target fracture from borehole cores, effective frequencies among roughness components were selected by the Fourier transform on each specimen. Then, the selected effective frequencies were averaged on each frequency. Because the averaged spectrum includes all the frequency profiles of each specimen, it shows the representative components of the fracture roughness of the target fracture. The inverse Fourier transform is conducted to reconstruct an averaged whole roughness feature after low pass filtering. The reconstructed roughness feature also shows the representative roughness of the target subsurface fracture including the geometrical characteristics of each specimen. It also means that overall roughness feature by scaling up of a fracture. In order to identify the characteristics of permeability coefficients along the target fracture, fracture models were constructed based on the reconstructed roughness feature. The computation of permeability coefficient was performed by the homogenization analysis that can calculate accurate permeability coefficients with full consideration of fracture geometry. The results show a range between $10^{-4}{\;}and{\;}10^{-3}{\;}cm/sec$, indicating reasonable values of permeability coefficient along a large fracture. This approach will be effectively applied to the analysis of permeability characteristics along a large fracture as well as identification of the whole feature of a fracture in a field scale.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2002.03a
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• pp.119-126
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• 2002

Fractures, especially faults have most significant influence on the difficulties encountered in various engineering and mining works, because they can give rise to inevitable reductions in shear strength as well as large increase in permeability. Thus, before underground access is possible, it is desirable to estimate the distribution and geometry of fractures in advance, if reliable structural data from e.g. Televiewer tool are available. To this end, fracture face mapping is just the evaluation method used to form a fracture image determined by intersecting of each fracture plane with a selected plane section of a rock mass, assuming that all fractures be planar with fixed-aperture. Although many fractures are geometrically complex and others are altered chemically, according to the abundant experiments in recent years, it would seem that the technique could be applied to benefit the design of numerous engineering works such as slope stability, tunnel excavations, dam foundation and diverse environmental works. This paper presents at first an evaluation algorithm for fracture face mapping and then concludes with various representative examples of applications.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.285-297
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• 2022

We report results of Extended Leak-Off Test (XLOT) conducted in a large diameter borehole, which is drilled for installation of deep borehole geophysical monitoring system to monitor micro-earthquakes and fault behavior of major fault zones in the southeastern Korean Peninsula. The borehole was planned to secure a final diameter of 200 mm (or more) at a depth of ~1 km, with 12" diameter wellbore to intermediate depths, and 7-7/8" (~200 mm) to the bottom hole depth. We drilled first the 12" borehole to approximately 504 m deep and installed American Petroleum Institute standard 8-5/8" casing, then annulus between the casing and bedrock was fully cemented. XLOT was carried out for several purposes such as confirming casing and cementing integrity, measuring rock stress states. To that end, we drilled additional 4 m long open hole interval to directly inject water and pressurize into the rock mass using the upper API casings. During the XLOT, flow rates and interval pressures were recorded in real time. Based on the logs we tried to analyze hydraulic conductivity of the test interval.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.325-330
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• 2016

The second phase of low- and intermediate-level waste (LILW) disposal facility is under planned on the sedimentary rock in unsaturated zone. In this study, we created two meshes which were a matrix continuum mesh and a fracture continuum mesh to carry out 2 dimensional numerical modeling for groundwater flow in the unsaturated zone containing fractures focused on the second phase of LILW disposal facility. Two continuum meshes were developed using MINC in meshmaker module of TOUGH2 code. A fracture continuum mesh was included the k-field distribution of the permeability derived from the Discrete Fractured Network (DFN) modeling. To apply the unsaturated zone for the modeling, the gridding steps to generate mesh were developed. Each step to generate a mesh consisted of definition of materials, setting the initial conditions and creating grids using MINC. The methodology development of meshes in this study will be applied for more precise modeling of groundwater flow and mass transport.