Geological Engineering Commons^™

Bibliometric Survey On Effect Of Climate Factors On Spread Of Coronavirus (Covid-19), Seema Patil, Jay Makwana, Manish Attri

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The new SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 has spread quickly around the globe since it was first reported in Wuhan city of China, in December 2019 subsequent to being contracted from a zoonotic source. The main focus of this bibliometric survey is to recognize the few studies which have upheld the epidemiological hypothesis that the effect of climatic factors is playing a crucial role in the spreading of COVID-19. The analysis is done on the basis of 412 documents such as journals, articles, editorials, short surveys and some review papers. The United States contributes to the maximum number of publications followed by the …

Hydrogen Wettability Of Sandstone Reservoirs, Stefan Iglauer, Muhammad Ali, Alireza Keshavarz

Research Datasets

Data set include the data for contact angle data as a function of pressure, temperature and stearic acid concentration in H₂. One exemplary figure is also provided for contact angle measurement in H₂ atmosphere.

Version 2 Ozone Monitoring Instrument So2 Product (Omso2 V2): New Anthropogenic So2 Vertical Column Density Dataset, Can Li, Nickolay A. Krotkov, Peter J.T. Leonard, Simon Carn, Joanna Joiner, Robert J.D. Spurr, Alexander Vasilkov

Michigan Tech Publications

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) has been providing global observations of SO2 pollution since 2004. Here we introduce the new anthropogenic SO2 vertical column density (VCD) dataset in the version 2 OMI SO2 product (OMSO2 V2). As with the previous version (OMSO2 V1.3), the new dataset is generated with an algorithm based on principal component analysis of OMI radiances but features several updates. The most important among those is the use of expanded lookup tables and model a priori profiles to estimate SO2 Jacobians for individual OMI pixels, in order to better characterize pixel-to-pixel variations in SO2 sensitivity including over …

Constructing A Complete Landslide Inventory Dataset For The 2018 Monsoon Disaster In Kerala, India, For Land Use Change Analysis, Lina Hao, Rajaneesh A., Cees Van Westen, Sajinkumar K. S., Tapas Ranjan Martha, Pankaj Jaiswal, Brian G. Mcadoo

Michigan Tech Publications

Event-based landslide inventories are important for analyzing the relationship between the intensity of the trigger (e.g., rainfall, earthquake) and the density of the landslides in a particular area as a basis for the estimation of the landslide probability and the conversion of susceptibility maps into hazard maps required for risk assessment. They are also crucial for the establishment of local rainfall thresholds that are the basis of early warning systems and for evaluating which land use and land cover changes are related to landslide occurrence. The completeness and accuracy of event-based landslide inventories are crucial aspects to derive reliable results …

Using Tandem-X To Measure Pyroclastic Flow Source Location, Thickness And Volume: Application To The 3rd June 2018 Eruption Of Fuego Volcano, Guatemala, F. Albino, J. Biggs, R. Escobar-Wolf, A. Naismith, M. Watson, J. C. Phillips, G. A. Chigna Marroquin

Michigan Tech Publications

The estimation of the volume of volcanic flows during an ongoing eruption is challenging but this information is crucial for improving risk assessment and for forecasting future events. Although previous studies have shown the ability of TanDEM-X satellite data to derive the thickness and the volume of lava flow fields during effusive eruptions, the method has not been explored yet for pyroclastic flows. Using bi-static interferometry, we produce TanDEM-X DEM on Fuego volcano (Guatemala) to measure the significant topographic changes caused by the 3rd June 2018 eruption, which destroyed the town of San Miguel Los Lotes. We estimate the volume …

Wetting-Driven Formation Of Present-Day Loess Structure, Yanrong Li, Weiwei Zhang, Shengdi He, Adnan Aydin

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2020 The Authors Present-day loess, especially Malan loess formed in Later Quaternary, has a characteristic structure composed of vertically aligned strong units and weak segments. Hypotheses describing how this structure forms inside original loess deposits commonly relate it to wetting-drying process. We tested this causal relationship by conducting unique experiments on synthetic samples of initial loess deposits fabricated by free-fall of loess particles. These samples were subjected to a wetting-drying cycle, and their structural evolutions were documented by close-up photography and CT scanning. Analysis of these records revealed three key stages of structural evolution: initiation (evenly distributed cracks appear …

Effect Of Geometry And Fluid Viscosity On Dynamics Of Fluid-Filled Cracks: Insights From Analog Experimental Observations, Haitao Cao, Ezequiel F. Medici, Gregory P. Waite, Roohollah Askari

Michigan Tech Publications

Fluid-filled volumes in geological systems can change the local stress field in the host rock and may induce brittle deformation as well as crack propagation. Although the mechanisms relating fluid pressure perturbations and seismicity have been widely studied, the fluid-solid interaction inside the crack of a host rock is still not well understood. An analog experimental model of fluid intrusion in cracks between planar layers has been developed to study stress conditions at the margins and tips. A combined high-speed shadowgraph and a photoelasticity imaging system is used to visualize the fluid dynamics and induced stresses on the solid matrix. …

Design And Development Of A Machine Vision System Using Artificial Neural Network-Based Algorithm For Automated Coal Characterization, Amit Kumar Gorai, Simit Raval, Ashok Kumar Patel, Snehamoy Chatterjee, Tarini Gautam

Michigan Tech Publications

Coal is heterogeneous in nature, and thus the characterization of coal is essential before its use for a specific purpose. Thus, the current study aims to develop a machine vision system for automated coal characterizations. The model was calibrated using 80 image samples that are captured for different coal samples in different angles. All the images were captured in RGB color space and converted into five other color spaces (HSI, CMYK, Lab, xyz, Gray) for feature extraction. The intensity component image of HSI color space was further transformed into four frequency components (discrete cosine transform, discrete wavelet transform, discrete Fourier …

Global Aeolian Dust Variations And Trends: A Revisit Of Dust Event And Visibility Observations From Surface Weather Stations, Xin Xi

Michigan Tech Publications

This study revisits the use of horizontal visibility and manually reported present weather (ww) records from the NOAA Integrated Surface Database (ISD) for characterizing the aeolian dust variability and recent trends over the globe and three largest source regions (North Africa, Middle East, and East Asia). Due to its qualitative nature, ww is combined with visibility to derive a new variable, VI, which has higher correlations with the dust emission and burden from satellite observations and global aerosol reanalyses than does the dust event frequency (FR) derived from ww only. Both FR and VI capture …

Utilizing Hyperspectral Remote Sensing For Soil Gradation, Jordan Ewing, T. Oommen, Paramsothy Jayakumar, Russell Alger

Michigan Tech Publications

Soil gradation is an important characteristic for soil mechanics. Traditionally soil gradation is performed by sieve analysis using a sample from the field. In this research, we are interested in the application of hyperspectral remote sensing to characterize soil gradation. The specific objective of this work is to explore the application of hyperspectral remote sensing to be used as an alternative to traditional soil gradation estimation. The advantage of such an approach is that it would provide the soil gradation without having to obtain a field sample. This work will examine five different soil types from the Keweenaw Research Center …

A Mathematical Framework For Estimating Risk Of Airborne Transmission Of Covid-19 With Application To Face Mask Use And Social Distancing, Rajat Mittal, Charles Meneveau, Wen Wu

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2020 Author(s). A mathematical model for estimating the risk of airborne transmission of a respiratory infection such as COVID-19 is presented. The model employs basic concepts from fluid dynamics and incorporates the known scope of factors involved in the airborne transmission of such diseases. Simplicity in the mathematical form of the model is by design so that it can serve not only as a common basis for scientific inquiry across disciplinary boundaries but it can also be understandable by a broad audience outside science and academia. The caveats and limitations of the model are discussed in detail. The model …

Service Life Of Prestressed High-Strength Concrete Pile In Marine Environment Considering Effects Of Concrete Stratification And Temperature, Lin Li, Weibing Gong, Jingpei Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Prestressed high-strength concrete (PHC) piles have advantages of light weight and high load carrying capacity, which have been widely applied in coastal and offshore engineering. However, PHC piles serving in the coastal or offshore regions have already undergone severe durability problem. This paper presents a comprehensive method for predicting the service life of PHC piles in the marine environment, which reasonably takes the temperature effects and the concrete stratification caused by centrifugation of PHC piles into account. The pile service life is divided into the diffusion and corrosion periods. The service life of the diffusion period is predicted by solving …

Effects Of Clay Creep On Long-Term Load-Carrying Behaviors Of Bored Piles: Aiming At Reusing Existing Bored Piles, Lin Li, Weibing Gong, Jingpei Li, Jingpei Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An analytical procedure is presented for assessing the long-term load-carrying behavior of bored piles in clay, where the plastic volumetric strain of surrounding clay caused by creep is estimated by an advanced elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model. Two key soil parameters, the undrained shear strength and the shear modulus, which govern the load-carrying behavior of bored piles in clay, are determined from the definition of the quasi-over consolidation ratio and the concept of the critical state theory-based Cam-clay model. The long-term load-carrying capacity of bored piles is evaluated based on the total stress method. Hyperbolic load-transfer models are developed with proper incorporation …

A Comparison Study Using Particle Swarm Optimization Inversion Algorithm For Gravity Anomaly Interpretation Due To A 2d Vertical Fault Structure, Neil Lennart Anderson, Khalid S. Essa, Mahmoud Elhussein

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new approach to the inversion of gravity data utilizing the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to model 2D vertical faults. The PSO algorithm is stochastic in nature; its development was motivated by the communal in-flight performance of birds looking for food. The birds are represented by particles (or models). Individual particles have a location and a velocity vector. The location vectors represent the parameter value. PSO is adjusted with random particles (models) and searches for targets by updating generations. Herein, the PSO algorithm is applied to three synthetic data sets (residual only with and without noise, residual …

A Feasible Approach To Predicting Time-Dependent Bearing Performance Of Jacked Piles From Cptu Measurements, Lin Li, Jingpei Li, De'an Sun, Weibing Gong

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a simple but feasible approach is proposed to predict the time-dependent load carrying behaviors of jacked piles from CPTu measurements. The corrected cone resistance, which considers the unequal area of the cone rod and the cone, is used to determine the soil parameters used in the proposed approach. The pile installation effects on the changes in the stress state of the surrounding soil are assessed by an analytical solution to undrained expansion of a cylindrical cavity in K0-consolidated anisotropic clayey soil. Considering the similarity and scale effects between the piezocone and the pile, the CPTu measurements are …

Flow Simulation Considering Adsorption Boundary Layer Based On Digital Rock And Finite Element Method, Yong Fei Yang, Ke Wang, Qian Fei Lv, Roohollah Askari, Qing Yan Mei, Jun Yao, Jie Xin Hou, Kai Zhang, Ai Fen Li, Chen Chen Wang

Michigan Tech Publications

Due to the low permeability of tight reservoirs, throats play a significant role in controlling fluid flow. Although many studies have been conducted to investigate fluid flow in throats in the microscale domain, comparatively fewer works have been devoted to study the effect of adsorption boundary layer (ABL) in throats based on the digital rock method. By considering an ABL, we investigate its effects on fluid flow. We build digital rock model based on computed tomography technology. Then, microscopic pore structures are extracted with watershed segmentation and pore geometries are meshed through Delaunay triangulation approach. Finally, using the meshed digital …

Prediction On Service Life Of Concrete Pipeline Buried In Chlorinated Environment Under Nonuniformly Distributed Earth Pressure, Lin Li, Weibing Gong, Jingpei Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes an analytical model to estimate the service life of concrete pipelines buried in chloride contaminated soils, which properly considers the effects of nonuniformly distributed earth pressures on both the internal tensile stress of concrete protective cover and the chloride diffusion coefficient through the nonhomogeneous coefficient of earth pressure. It is assumed that the underground concrete pipeline arrives at the service life end when cracking induced by expansion pressure due to the corrosion products occurs in the concrete protective cover. Hence, the whole service life of underground concrete pipeline is composed of chloride diffusion period and protective cover …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Data-Driven Groundwater Forecasts To Hydroclimatic Controls In Irrigated Croplands, Alessandro Amaranto, Francesca Pianosi, Dimitri Solomatine, Gerald Corzo-Perez, Francisco Munoz-Arriola

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

In the last decades, advancements in computational science have greatly expanded the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in hydrogeology, including applications on groundwater forecast, variable selection, extended lead-times, and regime-specific analysis. However, ANN-model performance often omits the sensitivity to ob- servational uncertainties in hydroclimate forcings. The goal of this paper is to implement a data-driven modeling framework for assessing the sensitivity of ANN-based groundwater forecasts to the uncertainties in observational inputs across space, time, and hydrological regimes. The objectives are two-folded. The first objective is to couple an ANN model with the PAWN sensitivity analysis (SA). The second objective …

Paleomagnetic Evidence For Modern-Like Plate Motion Velocities At 3.2 Ga, Alec R. Brenner, Roger R. Fu, David A.D. Evans, Aleksey V. Smirnov, Raisa Trubko, Ian R. Rose

Michigan Tech Publications

The mode and rates of tectonic processes and lithospheric growth during the Archean [4.0 to 2.5 billion years (Ga) ago] are subjects of considerable debate. Paleomagnetism may contribute to the discussion by quantifying past plate velocities. We report a paleomagnetic pole for the ~3180 million year (Ma) old Honeyeater Basalt of the East Pilbara Craton, Western Australia, supported by a positive fold test and micromagnetic imaging. Comparison of the 44°±15° Honeyeater Basalt paleolatitude with previously reported paleolatitudes requires that the average latitudinal drift rate of the East Pilbara was ≥2.5 cm/year during the ~170 Ma preceding 3180 Ma ago, a …

Petrology, Physicochemical And Thermal Analyses Of Selected Cretaceous Coals From The Benue Trough Basin In Nigeria, S. A. Akinyemi, O. F. Adebayo, B. B. Nyakuma, A. K. Adegoke, O. A. Aturamu, O. A. Olaolorun, A. Adetunji, James C. Hower, Madison M. Hood, A. Jauro

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty and Staff Publications

Abundant coal resources that were previously neglected due to a crude oil boom need revitalisation and integration into the national electricity mix to address the energy demands of the Nigerian population. Selected coal samples from the Benue Trough sedimentary basin in Nigeria were examined by various techniques, including proximate and ultimate analyses, organic petrography, Fourier transform infrared ray spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. Based on vitrinite reflectance, the Lafia-Obi (OLB), Garin Maiganga (GMG), Imiegba (IMG), and Okaba (OKB) coals are classified as subbituminous, while the Lamja1 (LMJ1), Lamja2 (LMJ2) and Chikila (CHK) coals are high volatile B bituminous. The Enugu (ENG) …

A Flood Risk Management Program Of Wadi Baysh Dam On The Downstream Area: An Integration Of Hydrologic And Hydraulic Models, Jizan Region, Ksa, Mazen M. Abu-Abdullah, Ahmed M. Youssef, Norbert H. Maerz, Emad Abu-Alfadail, Hasan M. Al-Harbi, Nasser S. Al-Saadi

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For public safety, especially for people who dwell in the valley that is located downstream of a dam site, as well as the protection of economic and environmental resources, risk management programs are urgently required all over the world. Despite the high safety standards of dams because of improved engineering and excellent construction in recent times, a zero-risk guarantee is not possible, and accidents can happen, triggered by natural hazards, human actions, or just because the dam is aging. In addition to that is the impact of potential climate change, which may not have been taken into account in the …

Load-Balancing Rendezvous Approach For Mobility-Enabled Adaptive Energy-Efficient Data Collection In Wsns, Jian Zhang, Jian Tang, Zhonghui Wang, Feng Wang, Gang Yu

Faculty and Student Publications

Copyright © 2020 KSII The tradeoff between energy conservation and traffic balancing is a dilemma problem in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). By analyzing the intrinsic relationship between cluster properties and long distance transmission energy consumption, we characterize three node sets of the cluster as a theoretical foundation to enhance high performance of WSNs, and propose optimal solutions by introducing rendezvous and Mobile Elements (MEs) to optimize energy consumption for prolonging the lifetime of WSNs. First, we exploit an approximate method based on the transmission distance from the different node to an ME to select suboptimal Rendezvous Point (RP) on the …

Revisiting Lightweight Encryption For Iot Applications: Error Performance And Throughput In Wireless Fading Channels With And Without Coding, Yazid M. Khattabi, Mustafa M. Matalgah, Mohammed M. Olama

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. Employing heavy conventional encryption algorithms in communications suffers from added overhead and processing time delay; and in wireless communications, in particular, suffers from severe performance deterioration (avalanche effect) due to fading. Consequently, a tremendous reduction in data throughput and increase in complexity and time delay may occur especially when information traverse resource-limited devices as in Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. To overcome these drawbacks, efficient lightweight encryption algorithms have been recently proposed in literature. One of those, that is of particular interest, requires using conventional encryption only for the first block of data in a given frame being transmitted. …

Cooperative Relay Selection For Load Balancing With Mobility In Hierarchical Wsns: A Multi-Armed Bandit Approach, Jian Zhang, Jian Tang, Feng Wang

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. Energy efficiency is the major concern in hierarchical wireless sensor networks(WSNs), where the major energy consumption originates from radios for communication. Due to notable energy expenditure of long-range transmission for cluster members and data aggregation for Cluster Head (CH), saving and balancing energy consumption is a tricky challenge in WSNs. In this paper, we design a CH selection mechanism with a mobile sink (MS) while proposing relay selection algorithms with multi-user multi-armed bandit (UM-MAB) to solve the problem of energy efficiency. According to the definition of node density and residual energy, we propose a conception referred to …

Timcc: On Data Freshness In Privacy-Preserving Incentive Mechanism Design For Continuous Crowdsensing Using Reverse Auction, Xiaoqiang Ma, Weiwei Deng, Feng Wang, Menglan Hu, Fei Chen, Mohammad Mehedi Hassan

Faculty and Student Publications

© 2013 IEEE. As an emerging paradigm that leverages the wisdom and efforts of the crowd, mobile crowdsensing has shown its great potential to collect distributed data. The crowd may incur such costs and risks as energy consumption, memory consumption, and privacy leakage when performing various tasks, so they may not be willing to participate in crowdsensing tasks unless they are well-paid. Hence, a proper privacy-preserving incentive mechanism is of great significance to motivate users to join, which has attracted a lot of research efforts. Most of the existing works regard tasks as one-shot tasks, which may not work very …

Geotechnical Engineering: Particle Size Distribution Of Layered Glacial Lake Columbia And Ice Age Flood Deposits In Latah Valley, Spokane, Wa, Aaron Cleveland, Kassie Allen

2020 Symposium Posters

We collected samples from the Latah Valley in Spokane, WA, of Missoula Flood deposits interbedded with Glacial Lake Columbia Sediments. We conducted tests on these soils according to ASTM standards. We performed Specific Gravity tests according to ASTM D854, and determined particle size distribution for these soils by conducting sieve and hydrometer analyses according to ASTM D422. We then plotted these data to create particle size distribution curves. Specific Gravities for the all of the samples collected range from 2.36 to 2.67. The flood deposits are dominated by coarse sand and gravel and the Glacial Lake Columbia deposits are dominated …

Using Geothermal Energy To Reduce Oil Production Costs, Will Gosnold, Mark Ballesteros, Dongmei Wang, Josh Crowell

Geology and Geological Engineering Faculty Publications

The economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the oil industry has been devastating. The decline in demand and price collapse have been particularly disruptive for shale oil extraction which is inherently more expensive than conventional operations. Survival and continuing operations will depend partly on reducing operating costs, and a ubiquitous and substantial cost in oil production is electrical power used primarily for pumping the wells. The Bakken in North Dakota play is particularly vulnerable because there is not an adequate electrical grid in the region. Many Bakken fields rely on generators burning propane, gasoline or diesel fuel at costs …

Deep Direct Use Geothermal Energy In The North Dakota Clean Energy Transition Strategy, Al Thibeault, Moones Alamooti, Nnaemeka Ngobidi, Will Gosnold

Geology and Geological Engineering Faculty Publications

The geothermal heat in the Williston Basin is an energy giant that can provide sustainable, renewable, and ecologically sound heat and power for the state of North Dakota (ND). We have known of this resource for decades, but development has been delayed for reasons which can be summed as economic competition from existing fossil fuel energy sources. With the “seismic” shock of the Covid-19 pandemic reverberating through the state’s carbon-centric economy, the timing is ideal for acting quickly to develop this energy resource.

Coincidentally, the State Energy Research Center (SERC) within the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), has recently …

A Relook At Canada’S Western Canada Sedimentary Basin For Power Generation And Direct-Use Energy Production, Catherine Hickson, Katie Huang, Darrell Cotterill, Will Gosnold, Dick Benoit

Geology and Geological Engineering Faculty Publications

The Alberta No. 1 Project, under the terms of Canada’s Federal government’s Emerging Renewable Power Program (ERPP), must produce 5MWe net. The goal of this study was to identify areas where three essential constraining conditions overlap; (1) the temperature gradient is sufficiently high that 120°C brines at depths of 4,500m or less are potentially available, (2) there are formations at the depths targeted with known high fluid flows, and (3) there is adequate existing infrastructure that supports low-cost power grid connection as well as a direct use application. A fluid temperature of at least 120^oC is needed to …