Unconventional gas has become an important resource to help meet our future energy demands. Although plentiful, it is difficult to produce this resource, when locked in a massive sedimentary formation. Among all unconventional gas resources, tight gas sands represent a big fraction and are often characterized by very low porosity and permeability associated with their producing formations, resulting in extremely low production rate. The low flow properties and the recovery factors of these sands make necessary continuous efforts to reduce costs and improve efficiency in all aspects of drilling, completion and production techniques. Many of the recent improvements have been in well completions and hydraulic fracturing. Thus, the main goal of a hydraulic fracture is to create a long, highly conductive fracture to facilitate the gas flow from the reservoir to the wellbore to obtain commercial production rates. Fracture conductivity depends on several factors, such as like the damage created by the gel during the treatment and the gel clean-up after the treatment. This research is focused on predicting more accurately the fracture conductivity, the gel damage created in fractures, and the fracture cleanup after a hydraulic fracture treatment under certain pressure and temperature conditions. Parameters that alter fracture conductivity, such as polymer concentration, breaker concentration and gas flow rate, are also examined in this study. A series of experiments, using a procedure of “dynamical fracture conductivity test”, were carried out. This procedure simulates the proppant/frac fluid slurries flow into the fractures in a low-permeability rock, as it occurs in the field, using different combinations of polymer and breaker concentrations under reservoirs conditions. The result of this study provides the basis to optimize the fracturing fluids and the polymer loading at different reservoir conditions, which may result in a clean and conductive fracture. Success in improving this process will help to decrease capital expenditures and increase the production in unconventional tight gas reservoirs.

One of the major challenges in fracturing low permeability/tight/unconventional gas formations is the loss of frac water and well productivity due to fluid entrapment in the matrix or fracture. Field results have indicated that only 15-30% of the frac fluid is recovered at the surface after flow back is initiated. Past studies have suggested that this water is trapped in the rock matrix near the fracture face and remains trapped due to the high capillary pressure in the matrix. Significant efforts have been made in the past to understand the impact of liquid blocking in hydraulically fractured conventional gas wells. Numerous remediation measures such as huff and puff gas cycling, alcohol or surfactant based chemical treatments have been proposed to reduce fracture face damage. However, when considering hydraulic fractures in unconventional reservoirs horizontal wells, the fluid may also be trapped within the fracture itself and may impact the cleanup as well as productivity. This study shows that under typical gas flow rates in tight / shale gas formations, liquid loading within the fractures is likely to occur. Most of the previous simulation studies consider a 2D reservoir model and ignore gravity, considering the high vertical anisotropy (or extremely low vertical permeability) in these tight reservoirs matrix. However, this study presents the results of 3D simulations of liquid loading in hydraulic fractures in horizontal wells, including gravity and capillary pressure effects. Both CMG IMEX and GEM have been used to study this phenomenon in dry and wet gas cases. The impact of drawdown, fracture and reservoir properties on liquid loading and well productivity is presented. Results show that low drawdown, low matrix permeability or low initial gas rates aggravate the liquid loading problem inside the fracture and thereby impact the cleanup and gas productivity during initial production. A clear understanding of the phenomena could help in selection of optimal production facilities and well profile. / text

published_or_final_version / Zoology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Tight gas reservoirs provide almost one quarter of the current U.S. domestic gas production, with significant projected increases in the next several decades in both the U.S. and abroad. These reservoirs constitute an important play type, with opportunities for improved reservoir simulation & management, such as simulation model design, well placement. Our work develops robust and efficient strategies for improved tight gas reservoir simulation and management. Reservoir simulation models are usually acquired by upscaling the detailed 3D geologic models. Earlier studies of flow simulation have developed layer-based coarse reservoir simulation models, from the more detailed 3D geologic models. However, the layer-based approach cannot capture the essential sand and flow. We introduce and utilize the diffusive time of flight to understand the pressure continuity within the fluvial sands, and develop novel adaptive reservoir simulation grids to preserve the continuity of the reservoir sands. Combined with the high resolution transmissibility based upscaling of flow properties, and well index based upscaling of the well connections, we can build accurate simulation models with at least one order magnitude simulation speed up, but the predicted recoveries are almost indistinguishable from those of the geologic models. General practice of well placement usually requires reservoir simulation to predict the dynamic reservoir response. Numerous well placement scenarios require many reservoir simulation runs, which may have significant CPU demands. We propose a novel simulation-free screening approach to generate a quality map, based on a combination of static and dynamic reservoir properties. The geologic uncertainty is taken into consideration through an uncertainty map form the spatial connectivity analysis and variograms. Combining the quality map and uncertainty map, good infill well locations and drilling sequence can be determined for improved reservoir management. We apply this workflow to design the infill well drilling sequence and explore the impact of subsurface also, for a large-scale tight gas reservoir. Also, we evaluated an improved pressure approximation method, through the comparison with the leading order high frequency term of the asymptotic solution. The proposed pressure solution can better predict the heterogeneous reservoir depletion behavior, thus provide good opportunities for tight gas reservoir management.

In the first part of this thesis, we demonstrate theory and computations for finite-energy line defect solutions in an improvement of Ericksen-Leslie liquid crystal theory. Planar director fields are considered in two and three space dimensions, and we demonstrate straight as well as loop disclination solutions. The possibility of static balance of forces in the presence of a disclination and in the absence of ow and body forces is discussed. The work exploits an implicit conceptual connection between the Weingarten-Volterra characterization of possible jumps in certain potential fields and the Stokes-Helmholtz resolution of vector fields. The theoretical basis of our work is compared and contrasted with the theory of Volterra disclinations in elasticity. Physical reasoning precluding a gauge-invariant structure for the model is also presented. In part II of the thesis, the time-harmonic Schrodinger equation with periodic potential is considered. We derive the asymptotic form of the scattering wave function in the periodic space and investigate the possibility of its application as a DtN non-reflecting boundary condition. Moreover, we study the perfectly matched layer method for this problem and show that it is a reliable method, which converges rapidly to the exact solution, as the thickness of the absorbing layer increases. Moreover, we use the tight-binding method to numerically solve the Schrodinger equation for Graphene sheets, symmetry-adapted Carbon nanotubes and DNA molecules to demonstrate their electronic behavior in the presence of local defects. The results for Y-junction Carbon nanotubes depict very interesting properties and confirms the predictions for their application as new transistors.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Univ., 2001. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics) -- University of Colorado Denver, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-98). Free to UCD Anschutz Medical Campus. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;

Numerical simulations have been performed to study the single-charge-induced ON current fluctuations (random telegraphic noise) in conventional (MOSFET) and non-conventional (silicon nanowire) nanoscale field-effect transistors. A semi-classical three-dimensional particle-based Monte Carlo device simulator (MCDS 3-D) has been integrated and used in this work. Quantum mechanical space-quantization effects have been accounted for via a parameter-free effective potential scheme that has been proved quite successful in describing charge set back from the interface and quantization of the energy (bandgap widening) within the channel region of the device. The effective potential is based on a perturbation theory around thermodynamic equilibrium and leads to a quantum field formalism in which the size of the electron depends upon its energy. To treat full Coulomb (electron-ion and electron-electron) interactions properly, the simulator implements two different real-space molecular dynamics (MD) schemes: the particle-particle-particle-mesh (P3M) method and the corrected Coulomb approach. For better accuracy, particularly in case of nanowire FETs, bandstructure parameters (bandgap, effective masses, and density of states) have been computed via a 20-band nearest-neighbor sp3d5s* tight-binding scheme. Also, since the presence of single impurities in the channel region represents a rare event in the carrier transport process, necessary event-biasing algorithms have been implemented in the simulator that, while enhancing the statistics, results in a faster convergence in the chan-nel current. The study confirms that, due to the presence of single channel charges, both the electrostatics (carrier density) and dynamics (mobility) are modified and, therefore, simultaneously play important roles in determining the magnitude of the current fluctuations. The relative impact (percentage change in the ON current) depends on an intricate interplay of device size, geometry, crystal direction, gate bias, temperature, and energetics and spatial location of the trap.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-07-07Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:47:33Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ribeiro_av_me_bauru.pdf: 3385358 bytes, checksum: 8e2e43e5facbedc0c7e25a21e63fe6ac (MD5) / São calculadas as estruturas eletrônicas de arranjos atômicos periódicos unidimensionais, bidimensionais e tridimensionais, através do método de combinação linear de orbitais atômicos (método tight binding). Esses orbitais correspondem aos átomos isolados das espécies químicas que compõem o arranjo atômico sob investigação. Combinações lineares deles, com coeficientes apropriados, aproximam a forma das funções de onda eletrônicas do arranjo atômico. Nos casos em que a sobreposição dos orbitais é desprezada, a contribuição de cada orbital atômico para função de Bloch é mostrada nas representações gráficas das estruturas de bandas calculadas. Após uma brve apresentação do método tight binding, são calculadas as estruturas de bandas de cadeias lineares de átomos de Carbono que têm um ou dois átomos por célula unitária. Essas cadeias são chamadas de cumuleno e poliino, respectivamente. Dentre os arranjos atômicos bidimensionais de interesse, é calculada a estrutura de bandas do grafeno. Essas energias são comparadas com resultados disponíveis na literatura. Para este material é realizada uma breve discussão sobre as bandas 'pi' provenientes de orbitais 'p IND. z' e sobre como a sobreposição dos orbitais atômicos afeta a forma das bandas. O método também é aplicado na modelagem de cristais tridimensionais. São calculadas as estruturas de bandas doo diamante, Germânio (com estrutura de diamente), Arseneto de Gálio (com estrutura zincblend) e Nitreto de Gálio (com estrutura de wurtzita). Os resultados obtidos são comparados com aqueles reportados por outros autores que usaram métodos ab initio / The eletronic structures of periodic arrangements of atoms in one, two and three dimensions are calculated by a linear combinations of atomic orbitals (tight binding method). Those orbitals correspond to the isolated atoms of the chemical species composing the atomic arrangement under investigation. Suitable linear combinations of such states approximate the shape of the eletronic wave functions of the atomic arrangement. When the overlapping of the atomic orbitals is disregarded, the contribution of each orbital to the Bloch state is displayed in the graphs of the band structures. After a brief description of the tight binding method, the band structures of linear chains of Carbon atoms are calculated. The cases of one and two atoms per unit cell are considered. They correspond to cumulene and polyyne, respectively. Among the two-dimensional atomic arrangements of interest, we focus the calculation of the band structure of graphene. The calculated bands are compared with available results. Some attention is devoted to the 'pi' bands associated to the 'p IND. z' orbitals is presented. The effects of the overlapping of the atomic orbitals are discussed. The method is also applied to model three-dimensional crystels. The band structures of diamong, germanium (with diamond structure), Gallium Arsenide (with zincblende structure) and Gallium Nitride (with wurtzite structure) are obtained. The results are compared with those reported by other authors who applied ab initio methods

After cleaning and shaping of the root canal the final objective of the endodontic procedure is to obtain a three-dimensional obturation of the root canal space with a fluid-tight seal at the apical foramen. The objective of this in vitro study was to evaluate four different obturation techniques in respect of: • the radiographic quality of root canal obturation, • apical leakage and • the potential of these techniques to obdurate lateral canals One hundred and sixty canals were prepared by using RaCe nickel titanium rotary files to a size 30 with 6% taper. During preparation irrigation was done with TopClear Solution (17% EDTA and 0.2% cetremide) and ChlorXTRA (6% sodium hypochlorite). The canals were divided in four groups of forty canals each and were obturated using the Hybrid Root SEAL technique, the EndoREZ technique, the System B/Obtura technique and the Thermafil technique. The Radiographic Quality of Root Canal Obturation: Digital radiographs were taken of the four groups of obturated canals from a buccolingual and a mesiodistal direction. The quality of obturation was determined for the coronal and apical halves of each canal and scored according to radiographic appearances. The data was tabulated and statistically analyzed using the Mann- Whitney U test. The Hybrid Root SEAL technique demonstrated a statistically significant higher number of radiographic defects in the coronal aspects of the root canals when compared to the System B/Obtura and Thermafil techniques (p<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the radiographic defects in the coronal aspects of the root canals between Hybrid Root SEAL and EndoREZ techniques (p>0.05). The Hybrid Root SEAL technique demonstrated a statistically significantly higher number of radiographic defects in the apical aspects of the root canals compared to all the other groups (p<0.05). Apical Leakage: Twenty obturated canals of each of the four groups were processed for evaluation of apical leakage. The root surfaces were coated with nail varnish and sticky wax, leaving 4.0 mm around the apical foramen exposed. Specimens were immersed in 2% methylene blue dye for 48 hours, rinsed in distilled water and embedded in clear acrylic resin. Specimens were sectioned horizontally in 1 mm increments and the extent of dye penetration was measured to the nearest millimeter using a stereomicroscope. The data was tabulated and statistically analyzed using the Man-Whitney U test. The specimens that were obturated with the EndoREZ technique demonstrated the least apical leakage compared to all the other groups tested in this study. However, there was only a statistically significant difference when the EndoREZ technique was compared to the Hybrid Root SEAL and System B/Obtura techniques (p<0.05). The specimens that were obturated with the System B/Obtura technique demonstrated the most apical leakage compared to all the other groups tested in this study. However, there was only a statistically significant difference when the System B/Obtura technique was compared to the EndoREZ and Thermafil techniques (p<0.05). The Potential to Seal Lateral Canals: Twenty obturated canals of each of the four groups were processed for evaluation of the potential to seal lateral canals. The specimens were subjected to a clearing technique and a morphological analysis was performed using a stereomicroscope. Lateral canals were counted and graded within the coronal, middle and apical thirds of the roots. The data was tabulated and statistically analyzed using the Man-Whitney U test. The Thermafil technique demonstrated the greatest number of filled lateral canals. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the Thermafil technique and all the other techniques (p<0.05). / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Odontology / unrestricted