Defining bounding surfaces within and between eolian and non-eolian deposits, Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, Moab Area, Utah, U.S.A.: Implications for subdividing erg system strata

ABSTRACT A model-independent, sequence stratigraphic approach is used to define bounding surfaces in the Navajo Sandstone in order to identify an architectural hierarchy of genetically related sedimentary packages and the surfaces that bound them across multiple scales of both eolian and non-eolian components of an erg system. Seven bounding surfaces and eight depositional units are defined, from small to large scale. A lamina-deviation surface bounds wedge- and tabular-shaped sets of laminae and/or laminasets, separating those that have different angle orientations on the dune slipface. A bed-deviation surface bounds a succession of beds (crossbeds) that lie at different angles or orientations to bedding above, below, or adjacent to it. A bedset-deviation surface is curved, inclined, and/or wavy and irregular that bounds bedsets and their internal stratification patterns; that is, bed-deviation surfaces, and lamina-deviation surfaces. A simple surface is gently inclined with or without small, concave or convex segments that bound beds and bedsets. A composite surface is horizontal with or without concave, curved, or irregular portions of that surface. A complex surface is laterally extensive (∼ 1–10+ km) that regionally bounds and truncates underlying conterminous and interfingered eolian and non-eolian strata. An amalgamated surface is a regionally extensive (∼ 10 to 100s km) mappable unconformity, merged unconformities, and their laterally equivalent conformable surface that can exhibit local to regional pedogenic modification, lags, and significant (meters to 10s m) paleotopographic relief. The genetically related sedimentary packages typically bounded by like or higher-rank surfaces are defined as laminae, laminasets, bed, bedsets, and simple, composite, complex, and amalgamated units. Field relationships of strata and surfaces are key to reconstructing the interactions between eolian and non-eolian deposits and the processes they represent at the local, regional, and basin scale. This classification scheme can be applied to erg-system strata to fully integrate changes in diverse facies within and between contiguous deposits.

Surface mapping, structural modelling and kinematics along the sinistral strike-slip fault zone, NE Potwar, Pakistan

This research was carried out to understand the nature of strike-slip Jhelum Fault zone and to propose a model for the surface to subsurface deformation pattern. Field data along with satellite images are used to construct the geological map. Moreover, the subsurface model has been proposed using the mechanism of dip-isogons in computer application which connects points of equal inclination or dip on the outer and inner bounding surfaces of a folded layers. The proposed geological map and subsurface model shows that the Jhelum Fault when propagated in the south from Hazara-Kashmir Syntaxis forms a continuous shear zone on surface with some discontinuous exposure of splay faults rather than exposed as continuous discrete break. Likewise, the subsurface cross sections show that deformation along the fault zone is accumulated by splay faults from the main Jhelum Fault, which forms a positive flower structure with steep north-eastward dips, which is characteristics of strike-slip movement along Jhelum Fault Zone. The vertical stratigraphic throw along these faults shows small offsets and little east–west shortening, indicating that the major slip along the fault is strike slip.

Evaluation and use of airspaces for thermal resistance in buildings

The thermal resistance (R-value) of airspaces depends on the emittance of surfaces around the airspace, dimensions, heat-flow direction, and the temperatures of bounding surfaces. Assessing the energy performance of building envelope components and fenestration systems requires accurate results for the R-values of any enclosed spaces. The evaluation of reflective insulation R-values has evolved to include use of computational fluid dynamics and surface-to-surface radiation to quantify convective and radiation contributions to the heat transfer across airspaces of all types. This paper compares an advanced and validated computational tool for calculating enclosed airspace R-values with the widely-used ISO 6946 and airspace R-values in the ASHRAE Handbook-Fundamentals. The tool evaluates construction defects, air-infiltration impact, and dimensional aspect ratios that 1-D methods do not address. The differences between the methods that are currently being used to evaluate the R-value and the advantages of the advanced method for evaluation of reflective insulation applications are discussed.

Interaction bounding surfaces exposed in migrating transverse aeolian ridges on Mars

Wind-blown sand self-organizes into bedforms that have now been identified on six different planetary bodies. These bedforms, including ripples and dunes, exhibit patterns that are diagnostic of surface-atmosphere interactions and can be used to interpret winds and sediment supply from satellite images of planetary surfaces. Patterns in dune and ripple fields change when one or more bedforms interact, for example, by linking, colliding, or merging with one another. When two bedforms interact, the cross-strata developed by the bedforms include a bounding surface where the two bedforms combined. These “interaction bounding surfaces” have been interpreted from ancient and modern strata in recent literature, but they have not yet been identified beyond Earth. On Mars, aeolian dunes and ripples form much as they do on Earth, but additional enigmatic bedform types are also present. Transverse aeolian ridges are straight-crested bedforms found abundantly on Mars, but with few analogs on Earth. Formation mechanisms for these enigmatic bedforms range from dune-like migration and construction to growth in place via wedge stacking or kinetic sieving. In this work, I studied exposed stoss-slope stratification on these enigmatic Martian bedforms to (1) identify the first in situ examples of interaction bounding surfaces captured visually, and (2) demonstrate that the transverse aeolian ridges must have been forward migrating.

Discriminating intra-parasequence stratigraphic units from two-dimensional quantitative parameters

ABSTRACT The intra-parasequence scale is still relatively unexplored territory in high-resolution sequence stratigraphy. The analysis of internal genetic units of parasequences has commonly been simplified to the definition of bedsets. Such simplification is insufficient to cover the complexity involved in the building of individual parasequences. Different types of intra-parasequence units have been previously identified and characterized in successive wave-dominated shoreface–shelf parasequences in the Lower Cretaceous Pilmatué Member of the Agrio Formation in central Neuquén Basin. Sedimentary and stratigraphic attributes such as the number of intra-parasequence units, their thickness, the proportions of facies associations in the regressive interval, the lateral extent of bounding surfaces, the degree of deepening recorded across these boundaries, and the type and lateral extent of associated transgressive deposits are quantitatively analyzed in this paper. Based on the analysis of these quantified attributes, three different scales of genetic units in parasequences are identified. 1) Bedset complexes are 10–40 m thick, basin to upper-shoreface successions, bounded by 5 to 16 km-long surfaces with a degree of deepening of one to three facies belts. These stratigraphic units represent the highest hierarchy of intra-parasequence stratigraphic units, and the vertical stacking of two or three of them typically forms an individual parasequence. 2) Bedsets are 2–20 m thick, offshore to upper-shoreface successions, bounded by up to 10 km long surfaces with a degree of deepening of zero to one facies belt. Two or three bedsets stack vertically build a bedset complex. 3) Sub-bedsets are 0.5–5 m thick, offshore transition to upper-shoreface successions, bounded by 0.5 to 2 km long surfaces with a degree of deepening of zero to one facies belt. Two or three sub-bedsets commonly stack to form bedsets. The proposed methodology indicates that the combination of thickness with the proportion of facies associations in the regressive interval of stratigraphic units can be used to discriminate between bedsets and sub-bedsets, whereas for higher ranks (bedsets and bedset complexes) the degree of deepening, lateral extent of bounding surfaces, and the characteristics of associated shell-bed deposits become more effective. Finally, the results for the Pilmatué Member are compared with other ancient and Holocene examples to improve understanding of the high-frequency evolution of wave-dominated shoreface–shelf systems.

Shear-Driven Mechanism of Temperature Gradient Formation in Microfluidic Nematic Devices: Theory and Numerical Studies

The purpose of this paper is to show some routes in describing the mechanism responsible for the formation of the temperature difference ΔT at the boundaries of the microfluidic hybrid aligned nematic (HAN) channel, initially equal to zero, if one sets up the stationary hydrodynamic flow vst or under the effect of an externally applied shear stress (SS) to the bounding surfaces. Calculations based on the nonlinear extension of the classical Ericksen–Leslie theory, supplemented by thermomechanical correction of the SS σzx and Rayleigh dissipation function while accounting for the entropy balance equation, show that the ΔT is proportional to the heat flux q across the HAN channel and grows by up to several degrees under the influence of the externally applied SS. The role of vst=ust(z)i^ with a sharp triangular profile ust(z) across the HAN in the production of the highest ΔT is also investigated.

Microbial Carbonate Reservoirs and Analogs from Utah

Multiple oil discoveries reveal the global scale and economic importance of a distinctive reservoir type composed of possible microbial lacustrine carbonates like the Lower Cretaceous pre-salt reservoirs in deepwater offshore Brazil and Angola. Marine microbialite reservoirs are also important in the Neoproterozoic to lowest Cambrian starta of the South Oman Salt Basin as well as large Paleozoic deposits including those in the Caspian Basin of Kazakhstan (e.g., Tengiz field), and the Cedar Creek Anticline fields and Ordovician Red River “B” horizontal play of the Williston Basin in Montana and North Dakota, respectively. Evaluation of the various microbial fabrics and facies, associated petrophysical properties, diagenesis, and bounding surfaces are critical to understanding these reservoirs. Utah contains unique analogs of microbial hydrocarbon reservoirs in the modern Great Salt Lake and the lacustrine Tertiary (Eocene) Green River Formation (cores and outcrop) within the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. Comparable characteristics of both lake environments include shallowwater ramp margins that are susceptible to rapid widespread shoreline changes, as well as compatible water chemistry and temperature ranges that were ideal for microbial growth and formation/deposition of associated carbonate grains. Thus, microbialites in Great Salt Lake and from the Green River Formation exhibit similarities in terms of the variety of microbial textures and fabrics. In addition, Utah has numerous examples of marine microbial carbonates and associated facies that are present in subsurface analog oil field cores.

Determining the efficiency and parameters of rubble strip reinforcement

The necessity of development and improvement of methods and means for the protection of preparatory roadways, in particular, protective structures, was proved on the basis of ordinary rock with binding surfaces. Analysis of the results of the study on the use of protective structures of ordinary rock and bounding surfaces was performed. It has shown the feasibility of reinforcing rock structures to ensure operational conditions for the protected roadways. Such structures include rubble strips reinforced with partitions made of metal mesh. To determine their efficiency and reinforcement parameters, studies were performed using provisions of structural mechanics, soil mechanics, and bulk media, as well as physical modeling using natural materials. According to the results obtained in the performed studies, the efficiency of reinforcement of rubble strips with a metal grid was proved and a procedure for calculation of reinforcement parameters that need to be considered in designing the above structures was developed. Such parameters include width and height of the strip, class of reinforcement, its diameter and tensile strength, size of the grid cells, angle of internal friction of rocks, and diameter of maximum rock pieces in the strip. It was established that reinforcement of the rubble strip by partitions made of metal meshes can reduce the width of the strip and volume of the rock fill by 1.33…2.66 times without losing the structure rigidity. To do this, the condition of reinforcement strength in grids must be met. It consists of comparing its tensile strength with maximum stresses in the partition. These stresses are determined by the magnitude of the load on the rubble strip from the roof rocks, the diameter of the reinforcement, and the maximum rock pieces, as well as relative extensional strain in reinforcement.

Automatic Super-Surface Removal in Complex 3D Indoor Environments Using Iterative Region-Based RANSAC

Removing bounding surfaces such as walls, windows, curtains, and floor (i.e., super-surfaces) from a point cloud is a common task in a wide variety of computer vision applications (e.g., object recognition and human tracking). Popular plane segmentation methods such as Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC), are widely used to segment and remove surfaces from a point cloud. However, these estimators easily result in the incorrect association of foreground points to background bounding surfaces because of the stochasticity of randomly sampling, and the limited scene-specific knowledge used by these approaches. Additionally, identical approaches are generally used to detect bounding surfaces and surfaces that belong to foreground objects. Detecting and removing bounding surfaces in challenging (i.e., cluttered and dynamic) real-world scene can easily result in the erroneous removal of points belonging to desired foreground objects such as human bodies. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel super-surface removal technique for 3D complex indoor environments. Our method was developed to work with unorganized data captured from commercial depth sensors and supports varied sensor perspectives. We begin with preprocessing steps and dividing the input point cloud into four overlapped local regions. Then, we apply an iterative surface removal approach to all four regions to segment and remove the bounding surfaces. We evaluate the performance of our proposed method in terms of four conventional metrics: specificity, precision, recall, and F1 score, on three generated datasets representing different indoor environments. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method is a robust super-surface removal and size reduction approach for complex 3D indoor environments while scoring the four evaluation metrics between 90% and 99%.

The Architectural Surfaces Characteristics of Sandy Braided River Reservoirs, Case Study in Gudong Oil Field, China

The architecture analysis of the different orders sedimentary bodies is of great significance to the efficient development of oil and gas fields. In order to investigate the effects of the architectural interfaces on reservoir quality and heterogeneity, this study takes the Gudong oil field as a case to investigate the architectural characteristics of hierarchical bounding surfaces using detailed descriptions of core and wireline logs. Architectural models from the 7th-order to the 3rd-order are analyzed, and the developmental characteristics of the 5th-order braided river, 4th-order single sandstone, and 3rd-order accretion are summarized. The interlayer between two braided rivers is floodplain mud deposition, with poor physical properties, stable thickness, and strong blocking capacity. Two models of interlayers are found in the 4th-order deposition. The first interlayer is between the braided filling channel and midchannel bar, which is composed of generally fine-grained sediments with calcium cementation and poor physical properties. The second interlayer is a transformation belt between two midchannel bars and is generally composed of gravel-scoured deposition with penetration capability. The 3rd-order surfaces are defined as the surfaces of accretions within midchannel bars. Two models of interlayers are also found in the 3rd-order surfaces of accretions. The paleocurrent of the sandy braided river is reconstructed by synthesizing the core data, well logging data, and production performance data. A total of 1 fluvial system (7th-order), 2 compound braided rivers (6th-order), 11 braided rivers (5th-order), 41 midchannel bars (4th-order), and 96 accretions (3rd-order) are developed in the study area.