Comparison of Joint Modeling Approaches Including Eulerian Sliding Interfaces

[摘要] Accurate representation of discontinuities such as joints and faults is a key ingredient for high fidelity modeling of shock propagation in geologic media. The following study was done to improve treatment of discontinuities (joints) in the Eulerian hydrocode GEODYN (Lomov and Liu 2005). Lagrangian methods with conforming meshes and explicit inclusion of joints in the geologic model are well suited for such an analysis. Unfortunately, current meshing tools are unable to automatically generate adequate hexahedral meshes for large numbers of irregular polyhedra. Another concern is that joint stiffness in such explicit computations requires significantly reduced time steps, with negative implications for both the efficiency and quality of the numerical solution. An alternative approach is to use non-conforming meshes and embed joint information into regular computational elements. However, once slip displacement on the joints become comparable to the zone size, Lagrangian (even non-conforming) meshes could suffer from tangling and decreased time step problems. The use of non-conforming meshes in an Eulerian solver may alleviate these difficulties and provide a viable numerical approach for modeling the effects of faults on the dynamic response of geologic materials. We studied shock propagation in jointed/faulted media using a Lagrangian and two Eulerian approaches. To investigate the accuracy of this joint treatment the GEODYN calculations have been compared with results from the Lagrangian code GEODYN-L which uses an explicit treatment of joints via common plane contact. We explore two approaches to joint treatment in the code, one for joints with finite thickness and the other for tight joints. In all cases the sliding interfaces are tracked explicitly without homogenization or blending the joint and block response into an average response. In general, rock joints will introduce an increase in normal compliance in addition to a reduction in shear strength. In the present work we consider the limiting case of stiff discontinuities that only affect the shear strength of the material.

[发布日期] 2009-12-16

[学科分类] 物理（综合）

[关键词] ACCURACY;COMPLIANCE;EFFICIENCY;FLEXIBILITY;GEOLOGIC MODELS;LAGRANGIAN FUNCTION;NUMERICAL SOLUTION;SHEAR PROPERTIES;SIMULATION;SLIP;THICKNESS