Macro scale facilities
Unique high pressure, temperature test rig
Capabilities
- Sample Size: 200 to 500mm dia
- Sample Length: 400 to 1000mm long
- Lateral Stress= 70 MPa
- Injection Pressure= 100MPa
- Axial Stress= 2000KN
- Temperature= 100 0C
- Multiphase flow (Oil+Water+Gas) testing
- Absolute and relative permeability
- Pore pressure measurements
- Full waveform acoustic emission (AE) monitoring
- Stress-strain measurements
P & S wave-Tomography measurements
Applications
- Thermo-mechanical, Geophysical, hydro-geological measurements simultaneously on rock ranging from granite to sedimentary rocks
- Well bore stability
- Sand production
- Fault simulation
- Fracturing- Water, foam, non-viscous fluid
- Ability to enhance permeability of coal to enhance CH4 recovery
- EOR
- Shale Gas- Stimulation techniques
- Geological sequestration of CO2
- CO2 storage capacity of rocks
- Ability to develop upscale models for filed scale problems. (1, 2, 3, 4mm)
Shale gas/coal-bed methane rig
Capabilities
- Sample Size: 50mm to 200mm dia
- Sample Length: 100 to 1000mm long
- Lateral Stress= 32 MPa
- Injection Pressure= 50 MPa
- Axial Stress= 1000KN
- The analogue data from the pressure transducers, displacement transducers
Capillary tubes at 3 intermediate points to measure pore pressure
Applications
- Hydro Fracturing or other forms of fracturing
- Shale gas and coal seam gas, carbon sequestration
- EOR
The high-pressure, high-temperature 3D stress reactor (True triaxial)
Capabilities
- Sample Size: 3 Cubical sample sizes
- Sample Sizes: 350, 500, 750 mm cubes
- Lateral Stress= 350 MPa
- Lateral Stress: 3 differential stresses
- Injection Pressure= 400 MPa
- Temperature= 400 0C
- Multiphase flow analysis
- Simulation depth: 12 km
Applications
- Hydro Fracture/shale gas
- Tight gas stimulations
- Rock breakage
- Well bore stability
- Sand production
- Sand transportations
- Well Casing
- Fault Simulations
- EOR
Triaxially Compressed Hopkinson Bar (TriHB)
Capabilities
- Barrel size 50mm bore size and 1.5m length
- Dynamic loading system
- 3 pairs of high-strength steel bars in three perpendicular direction
- 24-channel high-speed and high-precision data recorder
- Ultra-high speed imaging system
Applications
- To quantitatively determine mechanical properties of brittle materials under dynamic loads, focusing on rate-dependent constitutive models and fracture criteria
- Dynamic fracturing/fragmentation of brittle materials caused by blast and impact loading, mechanised excavation, and pulsed-water hydraulic mining
- Stress wave transmission and attenuation across material joints, and the effects of geometrical and physical properties of joints and filling materials
- Energy and wave transmission during dynamic fracturing related to earthquake, deep mining, blasting and explosion, protective structure design
Seismic Experimental Platform for Rock Joints
Capabilities
- A high bearing capability table (2.4m×1.2m)
- Spring loading system
- Static loading cell system
- Rock bars and plates of various size used as the wave propagation medium and fracture container
- Two synchronized HBM Gen3i and Gen7i system with 40 channels and 1MHz sampling frequency
Applications
- To simulate 1D P-wave propagation across a single rock fracture or a set of parallel rock fractures
- To investigate dynamic triggering of frictional slip of a rock fracture, which uses a 2D P-wave as a shear stress
- To perform frictional failure of a rock fracture induced by a combination of a decreasing normal stress and a constant shear stress
- To investigate obliquely incident plane P-wave propagation across welded or non-welded rock fractures
High-Speed Imaging System for Dynamic Deformation and Fracturing
The high-speed imaging system consists of two high-speed cameras (Phantom V2511, 1 million frames per second, fps) and 32-channel acoustic emission (AE) sensors. AE will be monitored by 32 piezoelectric sensors (KRNBB-PC and Panametrics-V103/V153) mounted on target surface. AE data will be continuously acquired and digitized at 100 MHz and 14-bits by a newly developed AE system. The ultrasonic waveform, generated by a waveform generator, is recorded using a NI digitizer PXIe card using a sampling frequency of 10 MHz. The developed 3D digital image correlation (3D-DIC) method with two high-speed cameras will be used for the quantitative measurement of deformation fields and the identification of constitutive parameters.
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MUEGGE Single Mode Industrial Microwave System
A single mode industrial microwave system (MUEGGE) consists of a power supply and control, a magnetron head, an applicator, an isolator, an impedance matching tuner, and a water load. The power supply and magnetron head generate microwave at the frequency of 2.45 GHz with a power adjustable from 1% to 100% (maximum power of 2 kW). Microwave then propagates in the WR340 waveguide in the TE10 mode and reaches a specimen in the applicator. The isolator protects the magnetron from overheating by redirecting the excess energy reflected from the specimen to a water load. The microwave power level in the environment is monitored by a microwave leakage meter to be below 5 mW/cm2 at any point.
