abstract: Hydraulic fracturing is an effective technique used in well stimulation to increase petroleum well production. A combination of multi-stage hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has led to the recent boom in shale gas production which has changed the energy landscape of North America. During the fracking process, highly pressurized mixture of water and proppants (sand and chemicals) is injected into to a crack, which fractures the surrounding rock structure and proppants help in keeping the fracture open. Over a longer period, however, these fractures tend to close due to the difference between the compressive stress exerted by the reservoir on the fracture and the fluid pressure inside the fracture. During production, fluid pressure inside the fracture is reduced further which can accelerate the closure of a fracture. In this thesis, we study the stress distribution around a hydraulic fracture caused by fluid production. It is shown that fluid flow can induce a very high hoop stress near the fracture tip. As the pressure gradient increases stress concentration increases. If a fracture is very thin, the flow induced stress along the fracture decreases, but the stress concentration at the fracture tip increases and become unbounded for an infinitely thin fracture. The result from the present study can be used for studying the fracture closure problem, and ultimately this in turn can lead to the development of better proppants so that prolific well production can be sustained for a long period of time. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Mechanical Engineering 2014

abstract: Laboratory testing was conducted to quantify strain concentrations adjacent to seams and scratches in high density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembranes. The tensile strain profile of remnants meeting the ASTM criteria for wide-width tensile testing from samples of field seams recovered for construction quality assurance testing was evaluated using digital image correlation (DIC). Strains adjacent to scratches on laboratory prepared samples loaded in tension were also measured using DIC. The tensile strain in the zone adjacent to a seam and the tensile strain adjacent to a scratch were compared to the tensile strains calculated using theoretical strain concentration factors. The relationship between the maximum tensile strain adjacent to a seam and the global nominal strain in the sample was quantified for textured and smooth geomembranes of common thicknesses. Using statistical analysis of the data, bounds were developed for the allowable nominal tensile strain expected to induce maximum tensile strains adjacent to the seam less than or equal to the typical yield strain of HDPE geomembranes, at several confidence levels. Where nominal strain is the global or average strain applied to the sample and maximum strain is the largest tensile strain induced in the sample. The reduction in the nominal yield strain due to a scratch in a HDPE geomembrane was also quantified. The yield strain was approximately the same as predicted using theoretical strain concentration factors. The difference in the average measured maximum strains adjacent to the seams of textured and smooth HDPE geomembranes was found to be statistically insignificant. However, maximum strains adjacent to extrusion welded seams were somewhat greater than adjacent to fusion welded seams for nominal strains on the order of 3% to 4%. The results of the testing program suggest that the nominal tensile strain should be limited to 4% around dual hot wedge seams and 3% around extrusion fillet seams to avoid maximum strains equal to 11%, a typical yield strain for HDPE geomembranes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Civil Engineering 2017

Many surveying engineering applications require the knowledge of the orientation parameters of instruments. One can use inertial measurement units (IMUs) to determine that. IMUs are combinations of several inertial sensors and comprise at least an accelerometer and a gyroscope. Therefore, they can detect accelerations and angular rates in a three-dimensional space. As micro-electro-mechanical systems, the sensors are increasingly getting smaller and lighter, but without being reduced in their accuracy. The smaller size facilitates diverse placing of the sensors, which allows a variety of uses. Moreover, several low-cost IMUs have been devised since the development of single-board computers. The main objectives of this work are to determine tilts using a low-cost IMU, and the accuracy of the sensor. Furthermore, it studies general IMU applications in surveying engineering, and examines whether low-cost versions are applicable. To fulfil the objectives, the study was based on a selected low-cost IMU. Two programs were developed as part of this work. One was to control the sensor and the other, to calculate the tilts and analyse the data. The IMU was mounted in front of the objective of the total station and aligned in different reference orientations. All measurements were performed under controlled thermal conditions. Thereby, it was ensured that no falsifications could appear due to ambient temperature influences. As a first step, the sensor calibration process was completed. It helped determine the signal offset parameter and their time-dependent change. The calibration was done using two present methods, the six-position and the multi-position methods. The calibrated IMU helped determine the tilts. This was done in the case of the accelerometer via trigonometric functions, which allowed an absolute orientation statement. In contrast, the gyroscope provided relative orientation with the multiplication of the detected angular variance and the time that passed. After that, a target-actual comparison with the reference information of the total station helped determine the external accuracy of the tilt from the IMU. Moreover, multiple measurements could give a statement of the internal accuracy. Finally, the Kalman Filter was added to smooth out the sensor data and combine it in real-time. The calibration methods showed similar results, and it was striking that the sensors did not show the expected drifts. The reason could be related to a pre-calibration by the manufacturer. On the one hand, the used IMU showed differences in the total station alignments in the order of 0.798° for the accelerometer and up to 4.3° for the gyroscope with the calibrated data. On the other, the differences in repeated measurements were at 0.024° for the accelerometer and 0.5° for the gyroscope. It was figured out different possible applications of IMUs in surveying engineering. Among other things, these included orientation monitoring of sensor platforms or the determination of the external orientation of unmanned aerial systems. For these applications, the usability depends on the achievable accuracy. In the case of the IMU chosen in this study, the proven accuracy is too inaccurate for these applications. There is a need for further investigation because the use of another sensor type may rectify the insufficient accuracy problem. Moreover, to achieve better accuracies and to make it possible to use the IMU in different ambient temperatures, the temperature influence must be determined.

abstract: Water is one of, if not the most valuable natural resource but extremely challenging to manage. According to old research in the field, many Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) around the world lose above 40 percent of clean water pumped into the distribution system because of unfortune leaks before the water gets anywhere from the fresh water resources. By reducing the amount of water leaked, distribution system managers can reduce the amount of money, resources, and energy wasted on finding and repairing the leaks, and then producing and pumping water, increase system reliability and more easily satisfy present and future needs of all consumers. But having access to this information pre-amatively and sufficiently can be complex and time taking. For large companies like SRP who are moving tonnes of water from various water bodies around phoenix area, it is even more crucial to efficiently locate and characterize the leaks. And phoenix being a busy city, it is not easy to go start digging everywhere, whenever a loss in pressure is reported at the destination. Keeping this in mind, non-invasive methods to geo-physically work on it needs attention. There is a lot of potential in this field of work to even help with environmental crisis as this helps in places where water theft is big and is conducted through leaks in the distribution system. Methods like Acoustic sensing and ground penetrating radars have shown good results, and the work done in this thesis helps us realise the limitations and extents to which they can be used in the phoenix are. The concrete pipes used by SRP are would not be able to generate enough acoustic signals to be affectively picked up by a hydrophone at the opening, so the GPR would be helpful in finding the initial location of the leak, as the water around the leak would make the sand wet and hence show a clear difference on the GPR. After that the frequency spectrum can be checked around that point which would show difference from another where we know a leak is not present. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Mechanical Engineering 2019

In 2010, the Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) market in the European Union went up over one million (1 014 436 units at the end of 2010 according to EUROBSERV’ER 2011). In 2011, it was estimated around 1.25 million according to Bayer et al. (2012). With more than 378 000 units installed in 2010, according to the Swedish heat pump association (SVEP), the Swedish GSHPs market was the first in the EU. As for the French GSHPs market, it was estimated to 151 938 units in service in 2010, which propelled France at the third rank in the EU. However, despite a relatively important number of GSHPs installed in the whole EU, since 2008 GSHP sales have shrank. Even Sweden which has been the most competitive country sees its GSHP sales decline in the first quarter of 2012 (EUROBSERV’ER 2011). This report is the achievement of my Master of Science Thesis project. It also represents the end of my studies at INSA Lyon in France and concludes my degree in Energetic and Environment Engineering. This report deals with the improvement of a heat injection apparatus which is available at KTH (Royal Institute of Technology). This equipment is better known as Thermal Response Test (TRT) apparatus. This kind of equipment improves Borehole Heat Exchangers (BHE) design in terms of size and cost benefits. This technology is generally used to design GSHP installations in both domestic and industrial purposes. It allows to determine really important thermal BHE parameters: the thermal conductivity of the ground and the borehole thermal resistance. The report covers a theoretical description of TRT experiments, the reasons and objectives of such a project, the apparatus design and its construction. The last part is dedicated to a first experimental laboratory results and some problems met during the project course.

This thesis contains the development of a deformation monitoring software based on undifferenced GPS observations. Software like this can be used in alarm systems placed in areas where the earth is unstable. Systems like this can be used in areas where people are in risk of getting hurt, like in earthquake zones or in land slide areas, but they can also be useful when monitoring the movements in buildings, bridges and other artefacts. The main hypotheses that are tested are whether it is possible to detect deformations with undifferenced observations and if it is possible to reach the same accuracy in this mode as when working in a traditional mode where the observations are differenced. The development of a deformation monitoring software based on undifferenced GPS observations is presented. A complete mathematical model is given as well as implementation details. The software is developed in Matlab together with a GPS observation simulator. The simulator is mainly used for debugging purposes. The developed software is tested with both simulated and real observations. Results from tests with simulated observations show that it is possible to detect deformations in the order of a few millimetres with the software. Calculations with real observations give the same results. Further, the result from calculations in static mode indicates that the commercial software and the undifferenced software diverge a few millimetres, which probably depends on different implementations of the tropospheric corrections. In kinematic mode the standard deviation is about 1 millimetre larger in the undifferenced mode than in the double differenced mode. An initial test with different observation weighting procedures indicates that there is a lot of potential to improve the result by applying correct weights to the observations. This is one of the aims in the future work within this project. This thesis are sponsored by the Swedish Research Council for Enviroment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning, FORMAS within the framework “Monitoring of construction and detection of movements by GPS ref no. 2002-1257" / QC 20101108

The effects of different shearing processes and sample sizes on the fluid flow anisotropy and its impact on particle transport process in rough rock fractures are significant factors that need to be considered in the performance and safety assessments of underground nuclear waste repositories. The subjects, however, have not been adequately investigated previously in either laboratory experiments or numerical modeling. This thesis addresses these problems using numerical modeling approaches. The modeling consists of two parts: 1) fluid flow simulations considering more complex but realistic flow boundary conditions during shear processes that cannot be realized readily in laboratory experiments, using digitalized fracture surfaces scanned in the laboratory, so that anisotropic fluid flow induced by shearing with channeling phenomenon can be directly simulated and quantified; 2) particle tracking simulations to demonstrate the impacts of such channeling effects on characteristic properties of particle transport. The numerical method chosen for the simulations is the Finite Element Method (FEM). Scale effects were considered in the simulations by using fracture surface samples of different sizes. The distributions of fracture aperture during shear were obtained by numerically generating relative translational and rotary movements between two digitalized surfaces of a rock fracture replica without considering normal loading. From the evolutions of the aperture distributions during the shearing processes, the evolutions of the transmissivity fields were determined by assuming the validity of the cubic law locally. A geostatistical approach was used to quantify the scale effects of the aperture and transmissivity fields. The fluid flow was simulated using different flow boundary conditions, corresponding to translational and rotary shear processes. Corresponding to translational shear (with a 1 mm shear displacement interval up to a maximum shear displacement of 20 mm), three different flow patterns, i.e., unidirectional (flow parallel with and perpendicular to the shear direction), bi-directional and radial, were taken into account. Corresponding to rotary shear (with a 0.5o shear angle interval up to 90o), only the radial flow pattern was considered. The particle transport was simulated using the Particle Tracking Method, with the particles motion following the fluid velocity fields during shear, as calculated by FEM. For the unidirectional particle transport, the breakthrough curves were analyzed by fitting to an analytical solution of 1-D advection-dispersion equation. The dispersivity, Péclet number and tracer velocity, as well as their evolutions during shear, were determined numerically. The results show that the fracture aperture increases anisotropically during translational shear, with a more pronounced increase in the direction perpendicular to the shear displacement, causing significant fluid flow channelling. A more significant increase of flow rate and decrease in travel time of the particles in the direction perpendicular to the shear direction is predicted. The particle travel time and characteristics are, correspondingly, much different when such effects caused by shear are included. This finding may have an important impact on the interpretation of the results of coupled hydro-mechanical and tracer experiments for measurements of hydraulic properties of rock fractures, because hydraulic properties are usually calculated from flow test results along the shear directions, with the effects of the significant anisotropic flow perpendicular to the shear direction ignored. The results also show that safety assessment of a nuclear repository, without considering the effects of stress/deformation of rocks on fluid flow and transport processes, may have significant risk potential. The results obtained from numerical simulations show that fluid flow through a single rough fracture changes with increasing sample size, indicating that representativehydro-mechanical properties of the fractures in the field can only be accurately determined using samples of representative sizes beyond their stationarity thresholds. / QC 20101207

There is growing appreciation and research regarding geophysical methods to evaluate near surface soil properties in geotechnical engineering. Geophysical methods are generally non-destructive test (NDT) methods that do not necessitate traditional sampling of soils. Instead, they rely on application of input signals and deduction of soil properties from the measured response of the domain. Geophysical methods include various seismic, magnetic and nuclear techniques applied at the surface and/or subsurface within boreholes. Surface seismic methods, which include Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW), are increasing in usage for geotechnical engineering purposes to evaluate stiffness properties of soils. MASW typically involves using a hammer to impact a base plate (also referred to as a striker plate) to transmit surface waves into the ground. These waves propagate through the underlying soils at a site and are received by an array of geophones placed on the ground surface. The manner in which the waves propagate is primarily influenced by soil stiffness, particularly against shear. Therefore, the signals recorded during an MASW survey can be analyzed to estimate the shear stiffness of the soils at a site, a parameter that is extremely important for seismic-related engineering purposes (e.g., site amplification, liquefaction, etc.). Aluminum plates are routinely used in a large number of MASW studies as a striker plate to couple the energy from a sledgehammer blow to the underlying soil layers. Various researchers have postulated that the material make-up of the striker plate has an effect on the frequency of the generated waves and, for that matter, the depth achieved with a typical MASW survey. For example, a less stiff material such as ultra-high-molecular-weight (UHMW) polyethylene is often recommended to increase low frequency energy of the input surface wave relative to aluminum. However, very limited research work has been performed in this area to systematically ascertain the effects of modifications to the striker plate material. Due to the limited direct research related to striker plates, MASW was utilized in this study to measure the dispersion curve resulting from MASW at various sites in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Different striker plate configurations were used during testing to systematically quantify their effects on typical MASW results. The proposed striker base plate configurations included a one (1.0) inch thick aluminum plate, a one (1.0) inch thick aluminum plate over additional rubber mats of varying thickness, and multiple ultra-high-molecular-weight (UHMW) polyethylene plates of various thicknesses. The purpose of this testing was to examine the performance of each configuration, particularly at the low frequency range of the dispersion results. Also efforts were made to qualitatively access the durability of the configurations with respect to long term exposure to impact load. / Civil Engineering

The Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) method has been widely used to evaluate the subsurface in engineering applications since late 1990’s. In MASW, surface waves are introduced into the subsurface and recorded by sensors along the ground surface. The characteristics of the propagating surface wave are influenced by the subsurface stratification, the manner in which the surface waves are input into the ground, and the survey parameters to acquire data. Rayleigh waves are typically generated by vertical strikes on a metallic plate which serves as a coupler between the active input source (e.g., a sledgehammer) and the ground surface. It has been suggested that plastic-type base plates can improve the low-frequency energy of Rayleigh waves and therefore, can increase the depth of investigation among other potential improvements. However, very little studies exist in the literature that evaluate the role of base plate material, especially plastic materials. In addition to Rayleigh surface waves, seismic surface waves can also be generated with horizontal impacts (i.e., Love waves) using specialized base plates. In this regard, much less is available in the literature regarding Love waves as sources in MASW testing which means that optimum field survey parameters, the effects of near-field, and the role of seismic source have not been thoroughly investigated yet for Love waves. Given the aforementioned gaps in the literature, two aspects of MASW have been investigated. First, the role of base plate material, specifically plastic-type plates, has been studied. Field data collected from six sites along with the data from laboratory experiments and numerical simulations of hammer-plate impact were studied. The results showed that softer base plates improve the energy transfer by as much 20% and lead to minor improvements, typically one-digit numbers in relative changes, in other signal characteristics such as signal bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. These results were corroborated with laboratory testing and numerical models of wave propagation with different base plate materials. The second goal was to improve understanding of Love wave propagation, particularly as related to resolution capabilities from survey parameters. Rayleigh and Love waveforms were collected with multiple active seismic sources at three sites and a systematic comparison was made between the two types of waves. Also, seismic wave propagation was simulated using the research community code SPECFEM2D to further investigate their differences. The results revealed critical new information about the depth of investigation, the effects of bedrock location on near-field effects, and the role of the different survey parameters on Rayleigh and Love wave data. The depth of investigation of Love wave MASW was deeper by about 2-9 m than that of Rayleigh MASW as a result of improved minimum frequency. The minimum source offset to avoid near-field effects was comparable for both Rayleigh and Love waves (0.3-0.4 of maximum wavelength). At closer source offset locations, Rayleigh waves were more affected by near-field effects and showed an additional 10% underestimation of planar phase velocities. Overall, the results from both parts of this study provides new practical insights about some of the unexplored aspects of surface wave testing using MASW. / Civil Engineering

Master of Science / Department of Geology / Matthew Totten / The Petersilie oil field in Ness County, Kansas produces out of the Mississippian System, a reservoir composed mainly of shallow water carbonates, at depths of around 4375 ft (1334 m). The lithology of the field ranges from limestone to dolomite, to interlaminated limestone-dolomite beds. Chert is commonly found throughout. Petersilie field lies to the west of the Central Kansas Uplift, and to the east of the Hugoton Embayment. The field saw much drilling activity in the 1960’s, when it reached a production peak of nearly 378,000 barrels of oil per year. Production declined swiftly after that until the late 1990’s, when waterflooding was successfully employed. In this study, a reservoir model was produced for the Mississippian as it occurs in Petersilie field using the Department of Energy’s EdBOAST reservoir modeling software, with the intent of providing a reference for future drilling activity in the Mississippian and determining reservoir characteristics that may have contributed to the effectiveness of waterflooding in this area. The reservoir model was checked by simulation with a companion reservoir simulator program, BOAST 98. Subsequent comparison of simulated and actual oil production curves demonstrates the reliability of well log and drill stem test data for the field and proves the reservoir model to be a good fit for the Mississippian in Petersilie. Production curve analysis of Petersilie indicates the field was an ideal candidate for waterflooding because it has a solution-gas drive mechanism. As the field approached depletion from primary recovery, oil saturations remained high. Petersilie also exhibits high porosity and good permeability. The BOAST software was found to be an effective and inexpensive means for understanding the Mississippian reservoir in central to south-central Kansas. It was determined that BOAST has potential for practical use by smaller independent oil companies targeting the Mississippian in Kansas.