Model-Experiment-Exercises (MEX)

The basic idea of Model-Experiment-Exercises (MEX) is to link modelling and experimental works from the very beginning i.e. in the conceptual phase. Due to the complexity of each part in the systems analysis, this combination is sometimes lost. Moreover, both models and experiments require highly sophisticated tools and equipment as well as highly specialized professionals, which also necessitate adequate measures and incentives for collaboration. GeomInt is introducing the MEX concept exactly for this purpose. Therefore, the following MEX studies occupy the largest part of the GeomInt book and feed most of the publications with research material.

Data Management

Data management includes the development and use of architectures, guidelines, practices and procedures for accurate managing of data during the entire data lifecycle of an institutional unit or a research project. Data are defined as different information units such as numbers, alphabetic characters, and symbols that are particularly formatted and can be processed by computer. The data in the project is provided by various actors which can be GeomInt partners, their legal representatives, employees, and external partners.

Synthesis and Outlook

As a result of the GeomInt research project (Chap. 1) a broad combined experimental and numerical platform for the investigation of discontinuities due to swelling and shrinking processes (WP1, Sect. 2.3), pressure-driven percolation (WP2, Sect. 2.4) and stress redistribution (WP3, Sect. 2.4) for important reservoir and barrier rocks (clay, salt, crystalline) has been developed. Model comparisons for damage and fracture processes driven by different processes provide information on the optimal areas of application of the numerical methods (Sect. 2.5).

Code Descriptions

The FFS method (see Sect. 10.1007/978-3-030-61909-1_3) was developed to simulate direct shear tests. To provide a tool for the project work and get things easier done a graphical user interface (GUI) was also created. The GUI simply calls all necessary functions by letting the user either fill form fields or choose input files from the working folder. The rock parameters and the conditions of the direct shear test with the normal stress levels and shear displacements have to be selected. If an experiment is simulated the lab results can be selected as a text file so a visual comparison is possible. The geometry has to be loaded as a point cloud or an artificial surface can be generated. With small modifications the code can do multiple executions using artificial surfaces.

Introduction to GeomInt

The use of the subsurface as a source of resources, a storage space and for installing underground municipal or traffic infrastructure has become much more intensive and diverse in recent years. In addition to classical anthropogenic interventions such as mining, oil and gas production or tunnel construction, other forms of underground use have come into the focus of economic, political and scientific research, particularly in connection with the transformation of energy systems.

Numerical Platform

An essential scientific goal of the GeomInt project is the analysis of potentials and limitations of different numerical approaches for the modelling of discontinuities in the rocks under consideration in order to improve the understanding of methods and their synergies with regard to theoretical and numerical fundamentals. As numerical methods, the “Lattice Element Method” (LEM), the non-continuous discontinuum methods “Discrete Element Method” (DEM), the “Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics” (SPH), the “Forces on Fracture Surfaces” (FFS) as well as the continuum approaches “Phase-Field Method” (PFM), “Lower-Interface-Method” (LIE), “Non-Local Deformation” (NLD) and the “Hybrid-Dimensional Finite-Element-Method” (HDF) will be systematically investigated and appropriately extended based on experimental results (Fig. 3.1).

Experimental Platform

In order to investigate the barrier rocks, such as saltstone, claystone and crystalline, response under the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) processes, a series of laboratory and field tests in the scope of the GeomInt project are carried out.