Mudstones compose nearly 70% of the volume of sedimentary basins, yet they are among the least studied of sedimentary rocks. Their low permeability and high compressibility contribute to overpressure around the world. Despite their fundamental importance in geologic processes and as seals for anthropogenic-related storage, a systematic, process-based understanding of the interactions between porosity, compressibility, permeability, and pore-size distribution in mudstones remains elusive. I use sediment mixtures composed of varying proportions of natural mudstone such as Boston Blue Clay or Nankai mudstone and silt-sized silica to study the effect of composition on permeability and compressibility during burial. First, to recreate natural conditions yet remove variability and soil disturbance, I resediment all mixtures in the laboratory to a total stress of 100 kPa. Second, in order to describe the systematic variation in permeability and compressibility with clay fraction, I uniaxially consolidate the resedimented samples to an effective stress equivalent to about 2 km of burial under hydrostatic conditions. Scanning electron microscope images provide insights on microstructure. My experiments illuminate the controls on mudstone permeability and compressibility. At a given porosity, vertical permeability increases by an order of magnitude for clay contents ranging from 59% to 34% by mass whereas compressibility reduces by half at a given vertical effective stress. I show that the pore structure can be described by a dual-porosity system, where one rock fraction is dominated by silt where large pores are present and the majority of flow occurs and the other fraction is dominated by clay where limited flow occurs. I use this concept to develop a coupled compressibility-permeability model in order to predict porosity, permeability, compressibility, and coefficient of consolidation. These results have fundamental implications for a range of problems in mudstones. They can be applied to carbon sequestration, hydrocarbon trapping, basin modeling, overpressure distribution and geometry as well as morphology of thrust belts, and an understanding of gas-shale behavior. / text

Unconventional oil and gas, which is of major interest in petroleum industry, often occur in reservoirs with transversely isotropic rock properties such as shales. Overlooking transverse isotropy may result in deviation in stress distribution around wellbore and inaccurate estimation of fracture initiation pressure which may jeopardize safe drilling and efficient fracturing treatment. In this work, to help understand the behavior of transversely isotropic reservoirs during drilling and fracturing, the principle of generalized plane-strain finite element formulation of anisotropic poroelastic problems is explained and a finite element model is developed from a plane-strain isotropic poroelastic model. Two numerical examples are simulated and the finite element results are compared with a closed form solution and another FE program. The validity of the developed finite element model is demonstrated. Using the validated finite element model, sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effects of transverse isotropy ratios, well azimuth, and rock bedding dip on pore pressure and stress distribution around a horizontal well. The results show that their effect cannot be neglected. The short term pore pressure distribution is sensitive to Young’ modulus ratio, while the long term pore pressure distribution is only sensitive to permeability ratio. The total stress distribution generally is not sensitive to transverse isotropy ratios. The effective stress and fracture initiation are very sensitive to Young’ modulus ratio. As the well rotates from minimum horizontal in-situ stress to maximum horizontal in-situ stress, the pore pressure and stress distributions tend to be more unevenly distributed around the wellbore, making the wellbore easier to fracture. The pore pressure and stress distributions tend to "rotate" in correspondence with the rock bedding plane. The fracture initiation potential and position will alter when rock bedding orientation varies.

Coastal areas in many parts of the world are vulnerable to tsunami waves. Large tsunamis are strong enough to bring about a substantial amount of sediment mobilization. Several post-tsunami field investigations performed in recent years have documented destruction induced by scouring process. For example, the 1993 Nicaraguan earthquake centred 100km off the Nicaraguan coast caused devastating tsunami-induced scour around structures and bridges (Satake et al., 1993). Differences in the scour depths were related to soil properties, shapes of structures, and tsunami hydrodynamics (Jayaratne et al., 2016). Furthermore, depending on the soil permeability, the flow and pressure propagate at different speeds within the soil, which affects water table fluctuations and the soil strength (e.g., Tonkin et al., 2003; Yeh and Li 2008). The primary objective of this research was to study the effect of different inland-propagating dam-break bore heights on pore pressure variations and scour evolution in saturated beds with two different bed slopes (i.e., zero and +5% slope) by performing comprehensive laboratory studies at a 1:40 scale. To achieve the objective, tsunami-like dam-break bores generated by rapidly opening a swing gate and propagated towards and over a sediment section and hit a structure centred within a sediment bed. The secondary objective of this experimental investigation was finding a relation between scour depths and pore pressure values as a function of still-to-impoundment water depth ratio. The results of this experimental investigation showed that effective pore pressures were consistently greater in the front face of a model than in the side face. Besides that, the highest effective pore pressures took place near the saturated bed surface. Such that, due to the propagation of supercritical bores the maximum effective pore pressure in the bottom of the front corner was 50% larger than the exact same location in the side face. While, this difference decreased to 10% in the case of subcritical bores. For the same hydrodynamic bore conditions, the maximum difference between effective pore pressure in the two faces of the model reduced by 70% in the inclined bed test than the horizontal bed tests and this difference was only 15%. However, the peak effective pore pressure around the model doubled in the inclined bed tests compared to the horizontal ones. The 5% upsloping decreased the maximum scour depths by two times as a result of the same hydrodynamic loading conditions.

No / It is important to consider the potential instability of the seabed due to the accumulation of wave-induced pore pressure in the design of a composite breakwater as the pore pressure within the seabed can considerably build-up under waves loading and eventually leads to a sharp decrease of the effective stress. Due to the importance in practical engineering, many theoretical models have been developed to evaluate the magnitude and distribution of the residual pore pressure. However, most of these studies treat the soil skeleton as an invariant medium, which ignores the damping of the soil strength due to the reduction of the effective stress. In this study, a two-dimensional poro-elastoplastic model, in which the influence of the reduction of the effective stress on the soil strength has been considered, is proposed to investigate the accumulation of pore water pressure around a composite breakwater and its effect on the soil characteristics. The simulation results show that the liquefaction is likely to occur around the toe of the breakwater due to the accumulation of pore water pressure there. The liquefaction leads to the decrease of soil resistance, which has great effect on the development of the residual pore pressure. Analysis shows that the development of residual pore pressure is also greatly affected by both the wave height and soil permeability. The simulation demonstrates that if the decrease of soil resistance is not considered, the soil liquefaction depth will be overestimated. / National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51479053), the 111 Project (Grant No. B12032), the marine renewable energy research project of State Oceanic Administration (GHME2015GC01), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu province (Grant No. BK20150804), Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province Plans for Graduate Research and Innovation Projects (Grant No. B1504708) and the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering

Yes / When ocean waves propagate over porous seabed, they cause variations of the pore pressure within seabed, leading to the possible wave attenuation and soil liquefaction. In order to advance and improve our understanding of the process of wave-induced seabed liquefaction and its impact on wave propagation, systematical experiments are carried out in a wave flume with a soil basin filled with silt. Both the pore pressures and water surface elevations are measured simultaneously, while the seabed liquefaction is videotaped using a high-speed camera. Laboratory measurements show that the pore pressure in surface layer mainly oscillates over time, while the wave period averaged pore pressure has little change. In the deep layer, however, the wave period averaged value of the pore pressure builds up dramatically. The results show that the wave height decreases rapidly along the direction of wave propagation when seabed liquefaction occurs. Such a wave attenuation is greatly enhanced when the liquefaction depth further increases. The experiments also demonstrate that the conditions (wave height and wave period) of incident waves have significant impacts on the wave-induced pore pressures, liquefaction depth and wave attenuation in a silt bed. / National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51479053), the 111 Project (Grant No. B12032), the marine renewable energy research project of State Oceanic Administration (GHME2015GC01), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University, China (Grant No. 2013B31614), the Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province Plans to Graduate Research and Innovation (Grant No. B1504708), and Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University (Grant No: 2016491011).

Field-based liquefaction evaluation procedures include the stress-based, strain-based, and energybased based approaches. The existence of a volumetric threshold shear strain, γtv, under which there is no development of excess pore pressures, and the unique relationship between pore pressure ratio and cyclic shear strain, γc, make a compelling argument for using a strain-based approach. However, the cyclic strain approach has not yet been standardized for field evaluations. The primary objective of this thesis is to use published databases of 415 shear-wave velocity and 230 Standard Penetration Test liquefaction field case histories to investigate the performance of the cyclic strain approach for the evaluation of initial liquefaction relative to the cyclic stress approach. Additionally, the concept of the γtv is expressed in terms of the peak ground surface acceleration and defined as the threshold amax. Computing (amax)t could provide a fast and simple evaluation for initial liquefaction, where no liquefaction is expected for a minimum computed (amax)t determined from the case histories. The variant of the strain-based procedure proposed herein avoids the direct need for laboratory cyclic testing by employing pore pressure generation models that are functions of cyclic shear strain, number of equivalent cycles, and relative density to predict initial liquefaction. The results from the proposed procedure are compared with those of the stress-based approach to determine which better matches the field observations of the case histories. It was found that the cyclic strain approach resulted in 70% to 77% correct predictions. In contrast, the cyclic stress approach yielded 87% to 90% correct predictions. The reasons why the predictions were not always correct with the cyclic strain approach are due to inherent limitations of the cyclic strain approach. Most significantly, an inherent and potentially fatal limitation of the strain-based procedure is it ignoring the softening of the soil stiffness due to excess pore pressure in representing the earthquake loading in terms of γc and neqγ. / Master of Science

Portrycket är en viktig parameter för att bestämma jordens egenskaper, såsom dränering, permeabilitet och stabilitet (då portrycket har en påverkan på den effektiva spänningen i jorden). Portrycket kan mätas med portrycksmätare men det kan även mätas under ett Cone penetrating test (CPT) med ett s.k. dissipationstest. Fördelar med ett dissipationstest jämfört med traditionell portrycksmätning skulle vara att det skulle spara tid och pengar, då man slipper trycka ner portrycksmätare och sedan vänta på att få portrycket ifrån dem, istället kan portrycket mätas under sondering med CPT.Detta självständiga arbete har som syfte att jämföra portrycksmätningar mellan portrycksmätning med BAT-spets och dissipationstest under CPT-sondering för att se hur bra mätvärden dissipationstester ger och om de eventuellt kan ersätta portrycksmätare. Fältförsöken av metoderna skedde i Uppsalalera, på en tomt i Kungsängen i Uppsala.Två stationer med BAT-spetsar på 5 meter, 7,5 meter och 10 meters djup sattes ner i leran. Sondering med CPT genomfördes sedan, där borren stoppades på samma djup som BAT-spetsarna. CPT:n stoppades på dessa djup i drygt 24 timmar, för att tillåta det generade portrycket som skapades när borren trycks ner i leran att skingras åt sidan. Jämviktsportrycket kommer vara det portryck som finns kvar efter att det generade portrycket har försvunnit. Portrycken från de två olika metoderna jämfördes sedan för att se hur nära dissipationstestet kommer värdena från portrycksmätningen med BAT-spetsarna.Resultatet av dissipationstesterna blev att inga av dem nådde referensvärdena från BAT-spetsarna efter 24 timmar. Beroende på användningsklass ligger dissipationstesterna inom den tillåtna minsta noggrannheten. Dissipationstest är antagligen inte så praktiskt tillämpbart i jordar med låg permeabilitet. / The pore pressure is an important parameter for determining the properties of thesoil, such as drainage, permeability and stability (since the pore pressure has aneffect on the effective stress in the soil). The pore pressure can be measured withpore pressure gauges but it can also be measured during a Cone penetration test(CPT) with a dissipation test. Advantages of a dissipation test compared tomeasurement with traditional pore pressure gauges would be that it would save timeand money, since you don’t have to press down pore pressure gauges and then waitto get the pore pressure from them, instead the pore pressure can be measuredduring probing with CPT.The purpose of this project is to compare pore pressure measurements betweenpore pressure measurements with BAT-tips and dissipation test during CPT probing,to see how good measured values the dissipation tests will provide and if theyeventually can supersede pore pressure gauges for pore pressure measurements.The field tests of the methods were done in Uppsala clay, on a site in Kungsängen inUppsala.Two stations with BAT-tips at 5 meters, 7.5 meters and 10 meters depth wereinstalled in the clay. Probing with CPT was then carried out, by stopping the CPT atthe same depth as the BAT-tips. Measurements with the CPT were done at thesedepths for just over 24 hours, to allow the generated excess pore pressure createdwhen the cone is pushed into the clay to disperse to the sides. The equilibrium porepressure is the pore pressure that remains after the generated pore pressure hasdissipated. The pore pressure from the two different methods was then compared tosee how close the dissipation test results were to the values from the pore pressuremeasurements with the BAT tips.The result of the dissipation tests was that none of them reached the referencevalues from the BAT-tips after 24 hours. Depending on the chosen application class,the dissipation tests are within the permitted minimum accuracy. Dissipation tests areprobably not practically applicable to soils with low permeability.

Coal mine impoundment failures have been well documented to occur due to an increase in excess pore pressure from sustained monotonic loads. Very few failures have ever occurred from dynamic loading events, such as earthquakes, and research has been done regarding the stability of these impoundment structures under such natural seismic loading events. To date no failures or damage have been reported from dynamic loading events caused by near-by production blasting, however little research has been done considering these conditions. Taking into account that current environmental restrictions oblige to increase the capacity of coal impoundments, thus increasing the hazard of such structures, it is necessary to evaluate the effects of near-by blasting on the stability of the impoundment structures. To study the behavior of excess pore pressure under blasting conditions, scaled simulations of blasting events were set inside a controlled sand tank. Simulated blasts were duplicated in both saturated and unsaturated conditions. Explosive charges were detonated within the sand tank at various distances to simulate different scaled distances. Information was collected from geophones for dry and saturated scenarios and additionally from pressure sensors under saturated conditions to assess the behavior of the material under blasting conditions.

Traditionally-constructed wells are commonly used to measure hydraulic head in all saturated systems, even in fine-grained sediments. Previous studies (Hvorslev 1951, Penman 1961) have shown that time lag in response to head changes between traditional wells and the surrounding fine-grained sediments can be a significant source of error. Time lag is caused by the time required for water to flow into or out of the well to reflect the appropriate change in head. A low-volume piezometer was constructed to measure changes in hydraulic head without requiring a change in fluid volume within the piezometer by directly measuring pore pressure in the surrounding sediments. The low-volume piezometer used a commercially-available pressure transducer that is hydraulically connected to the surrounding sediment by a porous-ceramic cylinder. The device is attached to a drive point that allows for quick insertion without creating excessive over-pressure so that equilibrium is achieved rapidly. The low-volume piezometer was inserted near traditionally-constructed wells in 3-4 m thick, saturated clay in west-central Florida. The low-volume piezometer was field tested to compare measured pore pressures with observed levels in traditionally-constructed wells. The comparison highlights any head difference between the two methods, and determines if there is a time lag between the two measurement methods and its magnitude. The low-volume piezometer was installed next to a traditionally-constructed well and heads in both wells were monitored for three months. Results show that the low-volume piezometer can take up to a month to reach equilibrium. Using Hvorslev's equations, traditionally-constructed wells have time lag of roughly 6 orders of magnitude greater than the low-volume piezometer. If this is correct, it could take up to 83,000 years for a traditionally-constructed well to reach equilibrium. However, when a trend analysis is performed on the hydrographs from the low-volume piezometer and the two traditional wells, the correlation coefficients are 0.95 and 0.96. The very strong correlation suggests that the low-volume piezometer and the traditional wells both respond similarly to changes in head. More field data need to be collected, but it appears that contrary to theory, time lag in traditionally-constructed wells may be negligible.

There are many complications associated with abnormally high fluid pressures in overpressured formations. Pore pressure can directly influence all parts of operations including drilling, geological studies, completion, and production. Accurate predictions of pore pressure and fracture pressure are vital aspects to the production and completion of safe, time efficient, and cost efficient projects. Knowledge of pressure distribution in the formation can greatly reduce complexities associated with drilling and completing a well. A three-method pore pressure and fracture pressure study was performed on two prospect deepwater wells located in the Gulf of Mexico. More than thirty offset wells in the greater region were initially analyzed for similarities with the two prospect wells. In the final analysis, only six wells were used to create pore pressure and fracture pressure models due to inconsistencies in similarities or lack of usable data in many of the offset wells. Pore pressure and fracture pressure models were constructed for the offset wells, and then applied and calibrated for the two prospect wells using drilling data such as mud weights, MDTs (Modular Dynamic Testing), and LOTs (Leak-off Test). Three types of pore pressure and fracture pressure models were used in the study: Eaton’s deep resistivity method; Eaton’s acoustic sonic method; and Bower’s interval seismic velocity method. Pore pressure and fracture pressure prediction was complicated by abnormal pressure in the formation due to undercompaction and seals. Both prospects were located in a deep subsalt environment. Low permeability and traps prevents fluid from escaping as rapidly as pore space compacts thus creating overpressure. Drilling through salt in deep water is expensive and risky. Elevated pore pressure and reduced fracture pressure underneath salt seals can create very tight mud weight windows and cause many drilling problems, as seen in the results of the offset wells’ pore pressure and fracture pressure models. Results indicate very small pore pressure and fracture pressure windows, or mud weight windows, because of overpressures in the formation caused by such a deep subsalt environment. Many casing points were needed in the final casing design of prospect wells to accommodate the smaller mud weight windows. Pore pressure has the most significant increase immediately below the salt, while the mud weight window remained constant or decreased with depth. The average mud weight window ranged between 1 to 2 pounds per gallon below the salt. / text