Fabric anisotropy & DEM informed two-surface hyperplasticity : constitutive formulation, asymptotic states & experimental validation.

In geotechnical analysis continuum idealisations of the bulk material still provide the most appropriate approach for engineers designing large-scale structures. In this area, the most successful framework for describing the behaviour of soils is Critical State (CS) soil mechanics. However, the findings from discrete element method (DEM) analysis, such as the uniqueness of the CS, can provide invaluable information in the development such models. This paper details the key concepts behind a two-surface hyperplasticity model (?) whose development was informed by recent DEM findings on the uniqueness of the CS. Asymptotic states of the model will be confirmed and the DEM-continuum-experimental loop will be closed through comparison of the developed model with experimental data on coarse-grained particulate media. This will demonstrate, that providing the previous stress history is accounted for, the proposed model is suitable for a variety of particulate media

Efficiency of a borehole seal by means of pre-compacted bentonite blocks

The backfilling and sealing of shafts and galleries is an essential part of the design of underground repositories for high-level radioactive waste. Part of the EC funded project RESEAL studied the feasibility of sealing off a borehole in plastic Boom Clay by means of pre-compacted bentonite blocks. Two bentonites, namely the FoCa and Serrata clay, have been used. Based on laboratory tests, the bentonite blocks had an initial dry density of about 1.8 g/cm3 to obtain a swelling pressure of about 4.4 MPa, corresponding to the in situ lithostatic stress, at full saturation. The set-up was equipped with several sensors to follow-up the behaviour of the seal and the surrounding host rock during hydration. Full saturation was reached after five months and was mainly reached by natural hydration. Swelling pressure was lower than originally foreseen due to the slow reconsolidation of the host rock. Later on, the efficiency of the seal with respect to water, gas and radionuclide migration was tested. The in situ measured permeability of the seals was about 5 × 10-13 m/s. A gas breakthrough experiment did not show any preferential gas migration through the seal. No evidences of a preferential pathway could be detected from 125I tracer test result

RESEAL II: a large-scale in situ demonstration for repository sealing in an argillaceous host rock: phase II

Final ReportPreprin

Quantification and analysis of icebergs in a tidewater glacier fjord using an object-based approach

Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that terminate in, and calve icebergs into, the ocean. In addition to the influence that tidewater glaciers have on physical and chemical oceanography, floating icebergs serve as habitat for marine animals such as harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii). The availability and spatial distribution of glacier ice in the fjords is likely a key environmental variable that influences the abundance and distribution of selected marine mammals; however, the amount of ice and the fine-scale characteristics of ice in fjords have not been systematically quantified. Given the predicted changes in glacier habitat, there is a need for the development of methods that could be broadly applied to quantify changes in available ice habitat in tidewater glacier fjords. We present a case study to describe a novel method that uses object-based image analysis (OBIA) to classify floating glacier ice in a tidewater glacier fjord from high-resolution aerial digital imagery. Our objectives were to (i) develop workflows and rule sets to classify high spatial resolution airborne imagery of floating glacier ice; (ii) quantify the amount and fine-scale characteristics of floating glacier ice; (iii) and develop processes for automating the object-based analysis of floating glacier ice for large number of images from a representative survey day during June 2007 in Johns Hopkins Inlet (JHI), a tidewater glacier fjord in Glacier Bay National Park, southeastern Alaska. On 18 June 2007, JHI was comprised of brash ice ([Formula: see text] = 45.2%, SD = 41.5%), water ([Formula: see text] = 52.7%, SD = 42.3%), and icebergs ([Formula: see text] = 2.1%, SD = 1.4%). Average iceberg size per scene was 5.7 m2 (SD = 2.6 m2). We estimate the total area (± uncertainty) of iceberg habitat in the fjord to be 455,400 ± 123,000 m2. The method works well for classifying icebergs across scenes (classification accuracy of 75.6%); the largest classification errors occur in areas with densely-packed ice, low contrast between neighboring ice cover, or dark or sediment-covered ice, where icebergs may be misclassified as brash ice about 20% of the time. OBIA is a powerful image classification tool, and the method we present could be adapted and applied to other ice habitats, such as sea ice, to assess changes in ice characteristics and availability

Adhesion Failures Determine the Pattern of Choroidal Neovascularization in the Eye: A Computer Simulation Study

Choroidal neovascularization (CNV) of the macular area of the retina is the major cause of severe vision loss in adults. In CNV, after choriocapillaries initially penetrate Bruch's membrane (BrM), invading vessels may regress or expand (CNV initiation). Next, during Early and Late CNV, the expanding vasculature usually spreads in one of three distinct patterns: in a layer between BrM and the retinal pigment epithelium (sub-RPE or Type 1 CNV), in a layer between the RPE and the photoreceptors (sub-retinal or Type 2 CNV) or in both loci simultaneously (combined pattern or Type 3 CNV). While most studies hypothesize that CNV primarily results from growth-factor effects or holes in BrM, our three-dimensional simulations of multi-cell model of the normal and pathological maculae recapitulate the three growth patterns, under the hypothesis that CNV results from combinations of impairment of: 1) RPE-RPE epithelial junctional adhesion, 2) Adhesion of the RPE basement membrane complex to BrM (RPE-BrM adhesion), and 3) Adhesion of the RPE to the photoreceptor outer segments (RPE-POS adhesion). Our key findings are that when an endothelial tip cell penetrates BrM: 1) RPE with normal epithelial junctions, basal attachment to BrM and apical attachment to POS resists CNV. 2) Small holes in BrM do not, by themselves, initiate CNV. 3) RPE with normal epithelial junctions and normal apical RPE-POS adhesion, but weak adhesion to BrM (e.g. due to lipid accumulation in BrM) results in Early sub-RPE CNV. 4) Normal adhesion of RBaM to BrM, but reduced apical RPE-POS or epithelial RPE-RPE adhesion (e.g. due to inflammation) results in Early sub-retinal CNV. 5) Simultaneous reduction in RPE-RPE epithelial binding and RPE-BrM adhesion results in either sub-RPE or sub-retinal CNV which often progresses to combined pattern CNV. These findings suggest that defects in adhesion dominate CNV initiation and progression

Reply to 'Comments on "Unsaturated soils: from constitutive modelling to numerical algorithms" by Daichao Sheng, Antonio Gens, Delwyn G. Fredlund and Scott W. Sloan [Computers and Geotechnics 35(6) (2008) 810-824] by Jingshuang Li, Yichuan Xing and Yujing Hou (letter)

We would like to thank the discussers for their interest in our paper. The hysteretic soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) used in the SFG model follows that of D. Sheng, S.W. Sloan and A. Gens, A constitutive model for unsaturated soils: thermomechanical and computational aspects, Computational Mechanics 33 (6) (2004), pp. 453–465. In this model, the SWCC is assumed to be independent of soil density, which represents a simplification of real soil behaviour

Velopharyngeal Insufficiency in Patients with Neurologic, Emotional, and Mental Disorders

The management of patients with velopharyngeal insufficiency coexistent with neurologic, emotional, or mental disorders was investigated, and changes in the voice quality of patients who had pharyngeal flap surgery were evaluated. Half achieved normal or near normal voice quality; 36%, although not reaching normal voice quality, did show improvement. Thus 86% showed either improved or normal voice. These results fall within the upper range of improvement reported by previous investigators of nonhandicapped patients. Judging from the results of this study, previously reported decisions not to perform surgery on patients with coexisting handicaps may have been too conservative

Efficient Routing of Mobile Agents for Agent-Based Integrated Enterprise Management: A General Acceleration Technique

7th International Workshop on Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation, EOMAS 2011, in Conjunction with CAiSE 2011, London, 20-21 June 2011Modern manufacturing enterprises are steadily moving towards open architectures wherein manufacturing activities are integrated with the activities of suppliers, customers, and partners within complex supply chains. Agent-based technology provides a natural way to design and implement such integration. We model the supply chain as a directed graph in which the vertices represent computers or individual agents and edges represent links. Thus the problem of enhancing the efficiency of mobile agents reduces to the problem of finding resource-constrained extremal paths in the graph. We study ε-approximation algorithms for solving the considered problems. We suggest a general three-stage technique, which follows and extends an earlier computational scheme in the literature for the constrained path problems (CPP). The new technique essentially improves on several earlier algorithms and also provides new aproach for contructing FPTAS for the CPP.Department of Logistics and Maritime Studie

Multi-physical processes in geomechanics – an introduction to constitutive modelling and coupling aspects

This paper is the basis for a course dedicated to the geomechanics modelling, taking into account multiphysics couplings. A number of different coupling are discussed, with respectively the fluid flow (saturated and unsaturated) and the thermal transfers in deformable porous media. Eventually some aspects on the numerical modelling with the finite element method are discussed