Elasto-Plastic Analysis of Tubular Joints of Offshore Platforms by Finite Element Method

The plastic node method is reformulated by the variational principle and is applied to elasto-plastic finite element analysis of tubular joints, eventually including the effect of internal and external gussets, stiffener rings, etc., if necessary. Four different joints are studied here in detail for the elasto-plastic behavior, the strain at the hot spot, the strain concentration factor around the intersection line, and the propagation of the plastic region with loading up to collapse in order to determine the ultimate strength, safety factor, and development of the plastic field. The present results are in good agreement with the experimental results.     

井中激电地-井方式井旁球体正反演

以激发极化法中的地-井方式中的体极化球形体作为研究对象,采用解析法对地下半空间的电位场进行求解,利用提取出的井中二次场异常电位差进行反演,得出极化球体的球心离井的距离和球心的埋深。通过计算机进行正反演模拟,验证了进行正反演计算的解析式的正确性,并从物理意义上对正反演过程中出现的现象进行分析。最后给出该方法的适用条件以及注意事项。研究对激发极化法地下勘探目标的定量分析具有明确意义。     

努力提高三维地震勘探精度，为西部煤炭工业做出新贡献

以国家重大产业技术开发专项“西部煤炭资源高精度三维地震勘探技术”项目的由来、意义和总体研究目标为引,概括的介绍了项目依托工程中各个专项技术研究完成情况,并对非均匀介质成像技术、高精度三维地震静校正技术、高密度采集技术、特观技术、岩性反演技术、属性体解释技术等六项重大关键技术取得的突破性进展进行了重点说明。指出随着我国煤炭生产重点的逐步西移,应加强诸如叠前、叠后深度偏移技术的研究,以解决复杂山区三维地震面元内地震反射波散射问题,提高其三维地震勘探精度,为西部煤炭工业做出新贡献!     

Post-mid-Cretaceous eastern North Sea evolution inferred from 3D thermo-mechanical modelling

The Late Cretaceous–Cenozoic evolution of the eastern North Sea region is investigated by 3D thermo-mechanical modelling. The model quantifies the integrated effects on basin evolution of large-scale lithospheric processes, rheology, strength heterogeneities, tectonics, eustasy, sedimentation and erosion.

The evolution of the area is influenced by a number of factors: (1) thermal subsidence centred in the central North Sea providing accommodation space for thick sediment deposits; (2) 250-m eustatic fall from the Late Cretaceous to present, which causes exhumation of the North Sea Basin margins; (3) varying sediment supply; (4) isostatic adjustments following erosion and sedimentation; (5) Late Cretaceous–early Cenozoic Alpine compressional phases causing tectonic inversion of the Sorgenfrei–Tornquist Zone (STZ) and other weak zones.

The stress field and the lateral variations in lithospheric strength control lithospheric deformation under compression. The lithosphere is relatively weak in areas where Moho is deep and the upper mantle warm and weak. In these areas the lithosphere is thickened during compression producing surface uplift and erosion (e.g., at the Ringkøbing–Fyn High and in the southern part of Sweden). Observed late Cretaceous–early Cenozoic shallow water depths at the Ringkøbing–Fyn High as well as Cenozoic surface uplift in southern Sweden (the South Swedish Dome (SSD)) are explained by this mechanism.

The STZ is a prominent crustal structural weakness zone. Under compression, this zone is inverted and its surface uplifted and eroded. Contemporaneously, marginal depositional troughs develop. Post-compressional relaxation causes a regional uplift of this zone.

The model predicts sediment distributions and paleo-water depths in accordance with observations. Sediment truncation and exhumation at the North Sea Basin margins are explained by fall in global sea level, isostatic adjustments to exhumation, and uplift of the inverted STZ. This underlines the importance of the mechanisms dealt with in this paper for the evolution of intra-cratonic sedimentary basins.     

Geostatistical inversion of coupled problems: dealing with computational burden and different types of data

Practical application of geostatistical inversion to coupled problems is hampered by a number of difficulties. In this paper, we address two of them: first, the computational cost of sensitivity (Jacobian) matrices and, second, the evaluation of the relative weights of different types of data. Regarding the first, we revise the adjoint state equations to propose a form whose cost is independent of the number of unknown parameters and only grows with the number of observation wells. Regarding the second, we derive expressions for the relative weights of different types of data. These expressions are based on minimizing the expected likelihood, rather than the likelihood itself. The efficiency of both improvements is tested on a synthetic example. The example analyzes a wide range of groundwater flow and solute transport conditions. Yet, the expected likelihood consistently yields the optimal weights. The proposed form of the adjoint state equations leads to one order of magnitude reduction in CPU time with respect to the conventional sensitivity equations.