Geological Engineering Commons^™

Spatial And Temporal Storm Generation From A Stochastic View, Jiaxiang Ding, Josept D. Revuelta-Acosta, Engel Bernard

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Precipitation is one of the most important parameters in the study of hydrology and most of the research has been done on daily storm generation. Current weather generation models are used to replicate daily or monthly time resolution, which is not able to show the variability within one day or one month. This project deals with sub-daily storm generation with finer resolution and more accurate estimation, which also requires an independent storm separation method. And the Monte Carlo correlated multivariate simulation is applied to compute the variables. The description is essential for soil erosion and water quality research. Another reason ...

Demonstration Of The Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (Gagd) Process In Carbonate Rocks., Alok Jiteshkumar Shah

LSU Master's Theses

The Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (GAGD) process was developed and patented by Dr. Rao at LSU in the early 2000s. The process involves the use of several existing or new vertical injection wells to inject gas and use the natural segregation of reservoir fluids from the density difference and the gravitational forces to displace the trapped oil and mobilize the oil downwards to be produced by a horizontal producing well. The GAGD process can be implemented as a secondary or tertiary oil recovery method. Several physical model experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the GAGD process for ...

Sombolestani_Thesis.Pdf, Shayan Sombolestani

Shayan Sombolestani

Hawai'i Wildlife Fund V. County Of Maui, Lowell J. Chandler

Public Land and Resources Law Review

In Hawai’i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui, the Ninth Circuit held that the plain language of the Clean Water Act provides jurisdiction over indirect discharges of pollutants from a point source into groundwater that is shown to be connected to navigable waters. The court found that studies confirmed pollutants entering the Pacific Ocean were fairly traceable to the County of Maui’s sewage disposal wells. In affirming the district court’s ruling, the Ninth Circuit held that Maui County violated the Clean Water Act by discharging pollutants into a navigable water without the required permit. The court also ...

Mountain Front Recharge In A Semi-Arid Climate, Southwest Montana, Charles Shama

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Groundwater recharge to regional valley benches originates largely from adjacent Mountain Front Recharge (MFR). The Madison Valley in Southwest Montana is a semi-arid cold climate that receives 31.75cm annual valley precipitation. In this study, two drainages are characterized and compared, looking at the hydrological processes between the stream and groundwater. North Meadow Creek is a high elevation stream dominated by snowmelt and contains reaches of gaining and losing surface water to groundwater. Daylight Creek is a spring fed disconnected stream. Methods used a surface water balance, temperature as an environmental tracer and two and three component mixing models to ...

Mineralogy And Sulfur Isotope Geochemistry Of The Apex And Bonanza Prospects At The Golden Sunlight Mine, Montana, Hamadou Gnanou

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The Golden Sunlight mine, located 50 km to the east of the famous Butte porphyry/lode deposits, is the largest gold mine in Montana, and has produced over 3 million ounces of gold in its 35+ year history. Most of this gold has come from the Mineral Hill breccia pipe (MHBP), a west dipping, cylindrical body of brecciated latite and country rock fragments of the Precambrian LaHood and Greyson Formations. The breccia pipe is late Cretaceous in age (84±18 Ma, DeWitt et al., 1986), is silicified, pyrite-rich, and is mineralized with gold, silver, and minor base metals. Because the ...

Fluid Inclusion And Stable Isotope Investigation Of Hydrothermal Talc And Chlorite Deposits In Southwest Montana, Garrett Hill

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Talc and chlorite deposits of southwest Montana formed as hydrothermal replacements of Archean and/or early Proterozoic dolomitic marble and quartzo-feldspathic gneiss. Although the hydrothermal replacement model is generally accepted, less is known about the temperature, composition, and origin of the fluids involved in talc and chlorite formation. The present study examines fluid inclusions in quartz associated with both talc and chlorite, stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes of talc, chlorite, and quartz, and stable carbon and oxygen isotopes of carbonate minerals. The deposits being examined include the Yellowstone, Beaverhead and Willow Creek talc mines, and the Antler chlorite mine.

Fluid ...

Uav-Based Geotechnical Modeling And Mapping Of An Inaccessible Underground Site, Elizabeth Anne Russell

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Digital photogrammetry is becoming a more common method used for mapping geological and structural rock mass features in underground mining. The issue of capturing geological and structural data in inaccessible, unsupported areas of mines remains even when utilizing terrestrial photogrammetric methods; thus, geotechnical models of mines are left with incomplete datasets. Large unsupported underground voids, like stopes, have the potential to cause major failures, but by filling in the geotechnical data gaps in inaccessible areas, potential failures can be predicted through kinematic analysis of the area’s mapped discontinuities. Implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in underground mines and recent ...

Characterization Of Peak Shear Strength Of Rough Rock Joints Using The Limited Displacement Multi-Stage Direct Shear (Ldmsd) Test Method, Michael Petro

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Current standardized direct shear test methods for rock joints do not account for damage caused to the individually unique asperity profiles of each sample. Current test methods require either a single sample to be sheared to large displacements under successive normal stresses, or the use of similar samples in multiple tests. Successive shearing of a single sample damages surface asperities and causes the overall roughness profile of the sample to change, reducing peak shear stress and consequently resulting in underestimation of friction angle and overestimation of joint shear intercept (cohesion). Obtaining joint surface specimens with identical roughness and geometry is ...

Bathymetry Data For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian

Publications and Research

This data set supports and forms the basis for the development of Digital Bathymetry Models (DBM) for Lakes Azuei (Haiti) and Enriquillo (Dominican Republic). Bathymetric Data is typically acquired using Sonar devices that measure the depth at specific points along a boat track and for which the longitude and latitude is recorded. From the resulting point cloud one develop a seamless representation of the floor of the lake on either a raster set (which is what we have done) or try to use a contour (vector representation) model in which the depth contours appear as polygons or -lines. The raw ...

Gis-Based Spatial Analysis Coupled With Geophysical Imaging To Identify And Evaluate Factors That Control The Formation Of Karst Sinkholes In Southwestern Missouri, Shishay T. Kidanu

Doctoral Dissertations

"Sinkholes are inherent features of the karst terrain underlying much of Greene County, Missouri. These features present hazards and engineering challenges to existing infrastructure unknowingly constructed on a seemingly benign ground surface. The primary objective of this research was to investigate the physical processes chiefly responsible for triggering the seemingly random distribution of sinkholes in the study area. This research employed an integrated approach encompassing regional scale GIS-based spatial analyses and site-specific geophysical data. GIS-based spatial analysis was employed to identify significant physical factors that appeared to influence the formation and distribution of sinkholes. Seven out of the twelve most ...

Toxicity Screening Of Biochar-Mineral Composites Using Germination Tests, Jan Mumme, Josephine Getz, Munoo Prasad, Ulf Lüder, Kern Jurgen, Ondrej Masek, Wolfram Buss

Articles

This study assessed the properties and toxicity (water cress germination trials) of 38 waste-derived, novel biochar-mineral composites (BMCs) produced via slow pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonization (hydrochars). The biochars were produced from sewage sludge and compost-like output (CLO) by varying the type of mineral additive (zeolite, wood ash and lignite fly ash), the mineral-to-feedstock ratio and the carbonization process. While pure hydrochars completely inhibited germination of water cress, this effect was ameliorated by mineral additives. Seedlings grew best in pyrolysis chars and while wood ash addition decreased plant growth in many cases, 1:10 addition to CLO doubled germination rate. The ...

Characterizing Long-Term Groundwater Conditions And Lithology For The Design Of Large-Scale Borehole Heat Exchangers, David Charles Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

"Construction of large scale ground coupled heat pump (GCHP) systems that operate with hundreds or even thousands of boreholes for the borehole heat exchangers (BHE) has increased in recent years with many coming on line in the past 10 years. Many large institutions are constructing these systems because of their ability to store energy in the subsurface for indoor cooling during the warm summer months and extract that energy for heating during the cool winter months.

Despite the increase in GCHP system systems constructed, there have been few long term studies on how these large systems interact with the subsurface ...

The Use Of Ceramic Water Filters Under Pressure In An In-Line Water Pumping System, Travis Dean Gardner

Masters Theses

"Ceramic pot filters (CPFs) have proven an effective point of use (POU) filter due to their relative low cost, ease to manufacture, and effectiveness at treating contaminated water. These filters are used by individual homes, and sometimes multiple filters are needed for each home in order to produce enough water for the family's household. If these filters could be used in-line with a pumping system or elevated storage tank, water could be filtered and used on demand for a community in an economically feasible way. However, CPFs are too fragile to use under pressure due to the weak points ...

Assessment Of Rockfall Rollout Risk Along Varying Slope Geometries Using The Rocfall And Crsp Software, Mariam S. Al E'Bayat

Masters Theses

"Most routes in mountainous areas suffer from rock falling, rolling and bouncing risk. There are many computer programs concerned with simulating the rockfall problem, and whereas they have the same purpose, they however differ in the input data that's needed to simulate the problem, and they also differ in the way of processing and kind of output.

This study used Rocfall® and the Colorado Rockfall Simulation Program (CRSP®) to simulate sixty-three models of varying slope geometry, where only the slope geometry is changed with the same material properties for both the slope and the rocks.

Both programs were fast ...

Hydrogeochemical Controls On Reactive And Nonreactive Solute Transport In Heterogenous Porous Media, Mahta Gholizadeh Ansari

Masters Theses

"This work examines how physical and chemical heterogeneity can affect reactive and non-reactive transport in porous media. The effect of heterogeneity of the porous media is investigated both on dissolution rate of magnesite and attenuation time of nonreactive contaminants in non-reactive media. Various spatial distribution were created using statistical parameters in PETREL.A total of 6793 transport modeling simulations were run using CrunchFlow. Lasso regression was used to select most significant features and those features are then used in linear regression and deep learning models.

The magnesite dissolution simulations were performed under different permeability ratios (magnesite /sand permeability) and inlet ...

Imaging In Karst Terrain Using The Electrical Resistivity And Multichannel Analyses Of Surface Wave Methods, Ragab W. Jaafar

Masters Theses

"Electrical resistivity tomography and multi-channel analyses of surface waves data were acquired at a study area in Phelps County in the south-central part of Missouri. The objectives of the investigation were fourfold: 1) to image the subsurface in the study area to a depth of 70 feet; 2) to compare the ERT images generated using both the dipole-dipole and Wenner-Schlumberger arrays; and 3) to assess how variations in the MASW array configuration affected MASW data quality; and 4) to compare the ERT-estimated depth to top-of-rock and the MASW-generated depth to top-of-rock.

The subsurface in the study area was imaged to ...

Mining Asteroids For Volatile Resources: An Experimental Demonstration Of Extraction And Recovery, Egboche Christopher Unobe

Masters Theses

"Gaseous compounds trapped within carbonaceous asteroids may prove to be important targets for prospective space miners in the near-term. Volatile release is from hydrated, hydroxylated and carbonated phases present, making such bodies attractive as feedstock for the production of H₂O, CO₂ and simple organic compounds. A source of these species in orbit provides an opportunity to locally produce space-craft propellant and other life-support gases through the application of In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).

For this study, an experimental vacuum system was modified and used to test the technical validity of radiatively heating asteroid simulants to extract contained gaseous ...

In-Situ Assessment Of Concrete Bridge Decks And Pavements Using Stress-Wave Based Methods, Mengxing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"Concrete infrastructure of United States is aging and deteriorating. Accurate assessment the condition of concrete infrastructure is critical for its maintenance and rehabilitation. Stress-wave based methods, including ultrasonic surface wave (USW) and impact echo (IE), are becoming popular for characterizing defects and mechanical properties of concrete infrastructures. In this dissertation, a comprehensive literature review of seismic wave theory and common types of defects identified in concrete infrastructures, as well as stress-wave based methods used for concrete infrastructure monitoring and characterizing on a selected concrete bridge deck and two concrete pavement segments are present. The utility and reliability of both methods ...

The Use Of Geophysical Methods For Dam Seepage Investigations And Dredged Oyster Deposit Characterization, Stanley Chinedu Nwokebuihe

Doctoral Dissertations

"The dissertation is made up of three papers, which discuss the utility of geophysical tools in earthfill dam investigations and dredged oyster bed characterization.

In the first paper, an earthfill dam in Warren County, Missouri was effectively investigated for seepage through the dam and its outlet works using an integration of the electrical resistivity tomography, induced polarization and spontaneous potential geophysical tools. Recommendations were subsequently made based on the results of the study on grout locations to prevent further seepage. In the second paper, a similar study of earthfill dam seepage was conducted on a different dam in Southern Missouri ...