Numerical simulation of the behavior of kinematically unstable slopes under dynamic influences

Introduction. The concept of estimating the dynamic parameters of the “base — weakened layer — block” system is proposed, taking into account the physical nonlinearity of the material and the kinematic method of excitation of vibrations. In accordance with this approach, the physical nonlinearity of the base and block material is considered using the Drucker- Prager model. The weakened layer is modeled by 3D spring finite elements. The verification procedure of the proposed methodology is carried out on the example of the dynamic calculation of the “base — weakened layer — slope” system.Materials and Methods. The computational experiments were performed using the ANSYS Mechanical software package in combination with a nonlinear solver based on the Newton-Raphson procedure. SOLID45 volumetric finite elements were used to discretize the computational domains. Combined elastic-viscous elements COMBIN14 were used to simulate the displacement of the block relative to the fixed base.Results. An engineering technique for the dynamic analysis of the stress-strain state of the “base — weakened layer — block” spatial system with kinematic method of excitation of vibrations is developed. The accuracy and convergence of the proposed method is investigated using specific numerical examples.Discussion and Conclusion. Based on the mathematic simulation performed, it is shown that the developed technique provides assessing the risks of the occurrence of real landslide processes caused by external non-stationary impacts.

Determination of Resonance Parameters of The PANI Thin Film Fabricated using Spin Coating Method

This study aims to determine the resonance parameters of polyaniline thin films to better understand the viscoelasticity properties of polyaniline films. The spin coating method was used with varying solvent concentrations and rotating speed of spin coater during the deposition Polyaniline (PANI) thin film on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). To determine the resonance parameters of the PANI thin film, the impedance and QCM frequency measurements were first carried out before and after coated with PANI. The modelling used is a modified BVD model, and the determined resonance parameters are C0, C1, L1, R1, L2 and R2. From the results of the analysis using the GRG Nonlinear solver program, it was found that solution concentration and rotational speed in the spin coating process has a significant effect on resonator parameters of PANI thin film. The best solution concentration from this study was 2% DMF with a rotational speed of 2,000 rpm. This is because in these conditions it provides a minimal damping effect on QCM.

A Multi-Level Non-Linear Solver for Complex Well Modelling

Complex well model has proved to be important for capturing the full physics in wellbore, including pressure losses, multiphase effects, and advanced device modelling. Numerical instability may be observed especially when the well is produced at a low rate from a highly productive multi-phase zone. In this paper, a new multi-level nonlinear solver is presented in a state-of-the-art parallel complex wellbore model for addressing some difficult numerical convergence problems. A sequential two-level nonlinear solver is implemented, where the inner solver is used to address the convergence in the constraint rate equation, and then the entire complex network is solved using an outer solver. Finally, the wellbore model is coupled with the grid solution explicitly, sequentially, or implicitly. This novel formulation is robust enough to greatly improve the numerical stability due to the lagging in the computation of mixture density in wellbore constraint rate equation and the variation in the fluid composition over Newton iterations in network nonlinear solver. The numerical challenge in the complex well model and the improvement of performance with the new nonlinear solver are demonstrated using reservoir simulation. Models with complex wells running into convergence problems are constructed and simulated. With this novel nonlinear solver, simulation gives much more reliable results on well productions without numerical oscillations and computational cost is much less.

An Adaptive Sequential Fully Implicit Domain-Decomposition Solver

Summary Modern reservoir simulation must handle complex compositional fluid behavior, orders-of-magnitude variations in rock properties, and large velocity contrasts. We investigate how one can use nonlinear domain-decomposition preconditioning to combine sequential and fully implicit (FI) solution strategies to devise robust and highly efficient nonlinear solvers. A full simulation model can be split into smaller subdomains that each can be solved independently, treating variables in all other subdomains as fixed. In subdomains with weaker coupling between flow and transport, we use a sequential fully implicit (SFI) solution strategy, whereas regions with stronger coupling are solved with an FI method. Convergence to the FI solution is ensured by a global update that efficiently resolves long-range interactions across subdomains. The result is a solution strategy that combines the efficiency of SFI and its ability to use specialized solvers for flow and transport with the robustness and correctness of FI. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method through a range of test cases, including both contrived setups to test nonlinear solver performance and realistic field models with complex geology and fluid physics. For each case, we compare the results with those obtained using standard FI and SFI solvers. This paper is published as part of the 2021 Reservoir Simulation Conference Special Issue.

A New and Efficient Nonlinear Solver for Load Flow Problems

Load Flow (LF) analysis is a fundamental and significant issue in electric power systems. Because of the nonlinearity of the power mismatch equations, the accuracy of the nonlinear solvers is important. In this study, a novel and efficient nonlinear solver is proposed with active applications to LF problems. The formulation of the Proposed Method (PM) and its workflow and mathematical modeling for its application in LF problems have been discussed. The performance of the PM has been validated on the IEEE 14-bus and 30-bus test systems against several existing methods. The simulation results show that the PM exhibits higher order accuracy, faster convergence characteristics, smaller number of iterations, and lesser computation times in comparison with the other benchmark methods.

Dynamic Coarsening and Local Reordered Nonlinear Solvers for Simulating Transport in Porous Media

Summary We present a robust and flexible sequential solution approach in which the flow equation is solved on the original grid, whereas the transport equations are solved with a new dynamic coarsening method that adapts the grid resolution locally to reduce the number of cells as much as possible. The resulting grid is formed by combining precomputed coarse partitions of an underlying fine model. Our approach is flexible and makes very few assumptions on cell geometries and the topology of the grid. To further accelerate the transport step, we combine dynamic coarsening with a local nonlinear solver that permutes the discrete transport equations into an optimal block-triangular form so that these can be solved very efficiently using a nonlinear back-substitution method. Efficiency and utility of the overall approach are assessed through a number of conceptual test cases, including the Olympus field model.