Development and Calibration of DEM Materials Based on Rock Penetration Drillibility Parameters

Distinct Element Models (DEM) are a class of material models that represent the material as a domain of small elastic balls bonded by non-linear elastic springs with defined shear and tensile bond strengths. A part of this internship is a follow up work based on work done by another member of Advanced Drilling Group (ADG) member during his internship which was focused on researching a number of rock analogue materials and measuring 8 drilibility parameters, proposed by Baker-Hughes [2], for them. As a follow up to this work, the measured drillibility parameters are going to be used as a reference for creating DEM rock type materials. The standard procedure recommended in the PFC2d library [7] is going to be modified to be able to match the as many of drillibility parameters possible. These DEM materials can be used later in the rock cutting DEM toolkit [3] that has been already developed by this intern to further study the behavior of different rock types in a cutting phenomenon. The intern will also help the company for testing the new version of their software (PFC2D 5.0) with performing the same material calibration in the new software version. Finally, the intern will re-write his rock-cutting environment [3] existing in PFC2d 4 into PFC2d 5. The general intention of this internship is to publish this process and the result to the relevant conference or Journals.

Faculty Supervisor:

Stephen Butt & Katna Munaswamy

Student:

Mohammad Mozaffari

Partner:

Itasca Consulting Group Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Mining and quarrying

University:

Memorial University of Newfoundland