New Personnel: Dr. Hao Li has joined Itasca Consulting Canada, Inc. in the Sudbury, Canada office. Dr. Li is a geomechanics engineer with over 6 years of experience specializing in numerical modeling and software development in the areas of geomechanics, engineering geology, and hydropower engineering.
 

Ongoing Project: HCItasca offices in partnership with Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Center (JKMRC) of Brisbane, Australia are mid-way in the development of the Hybrid Stress Blast Management (HSBM) system. HSBM is a consortium-funded project that will provide a comprehensive suite of programs for the design of blasts — from rock and joint characterization to blast layout and design to numerical results from blasting. HCItasca's component in the project, BLO-UP (Blast Layout Optimization Using PFC), will be demonstrated in beta version to project sponsors in June. BLO-UP is the calculation engine of the HSBM project, which provides blast results from inputs derived from the JKMRC components.
BLO-UP will accept bench, stope, and generalized "cube" geometries. Blastholes may be defined individually or in patterns, and may be loaded individually or in groups. Once the problem is defined and run, the program will return a range of data including: final muckpile, particle velocities, gas pressure in blastholes, particle distributions, material distributions, and pre-specified movies of the blast.
 

New Features in Pre-release PFC2D and PFC3D 3.1

Movie Facility: built-in capacity to create movies in AVI and DCX format. The use of the new command is illustrated in the "Revision History" on the PFC2D/PFC3D 3.1 download page on the HCItasca web site (see the entry for subversion 3.10-200A dated 01/07/04).

Fluid/particle interaction: PFC can now simulate the interation of discrete particles with an incompressible, high-Reynolds number fluid flow.

New boundary conditions: Periodic boundary conditions have now been implemented. Screens can now be simulated using the new line wall (3D) or point wall (2D) boundaries.

UpdateAlert:

Updated since 4/15/2004:

PFC3D is used to simulate pneumatic conveying of bulk material in powder form using new fluid/particle interaction facility in version 3.1

The organizing committee at host Itasca Consultants GmbH reports: the preparation of our symposium goes well. The preliminary program has been established. Approximately 50 papers were selected for oral presentation and will be included in the conference proceedings published by Balkema. Authors from 19 different countries covering Europe, Australia, North America and Asia will present on the following topics:

• rock slope stability, deformation and failure mechanisms
• tunnels and caverns in fractured rock masses
• application of DEM in underground and surface mining
• reinforcement design (anchors, shotcrete, bolts)
• dam analysis
• earthquake, fault and rockburst modeling
• mechanical behavior of masonry structures (walls, bridges, towers, columns)
• micromechanical particle behavior
• dynamic behavior of discrete structures

Visit the conference web site for more information

See the Preliminary Program

All information about the conference (registration form, hotel reservations, venue of the conference, the training seminar etc. are available at the conference homepage). Do not hesitate to contact us in case of questions or problems: udec-symp@itasca.de. It will be a pleasure for us to help you.

Both the UDEC Symposium and the PFC Symposium will feature one-day training courses on the day before the official start of the symposia (September 29, 2004, and October 27, 2004, respectively). These training courses provide a low- or no-cost option to acquire an overview of the codes and their uses. Coupled with the exposure and in-depth knowledge available at the symposia, these training courses are an excellent opportunity to get hands-on training or to further refine existing skills. See the UDEC Symposium and PFC Symposium announcements for information on schedule, location, and registration for these short courses.

UDEC results for three different cases showing
vertical displacements due to loading on a pier in fractured rock.

Researchers P. Alfonsi, O. Fouché, and E. Bourgeois of Laboratoire Central des Ponts & Chaussées (Paris) and École des Mines de Paris (Fontainebleau) have performed research on the design of foundations in rock using numerical methods, including UDEC. Their work will appear in the article "Foundation on rock: effect of rock fractures on settlement of bridge piers" in the Proceedings of the First International UDEC/3DEC Symposium, September 29-October 1, 2004.

Q: “Are previous versions of Itasca codes available online?”

A: The code download page on the HCItasca web site always provides updates (bug-fixes, added features, etc.) to current versions of Itasca codes. Also, users may find pre-release versions and previous versions (one release prior to the current) of the codes. If a version two or more releases back from the current is needed, try the public FTP location: ftp.winternet.com/users/icg. All available versions are stored in numbered folders within a main folder corresponding to the code name. Older codes do receive bug-fixes when discovered however development ceases once the code is superceded by a newer release.

The following articles by HCItasca professional staff have been published since fall of 2003.

Andrieux, P. P., J. Hadjigeorgiou and R. K. Brummer. "A Rock Engineering Systems Approach to Destress Rock Blasting", in Proceedings of the Second International Seminar on Deep and High Stress Mining (Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, February 2004).

Andrieux, P. P., R. K. Brummer, Q. Lui, A. Mortazavi and B. P. Simser. "Large-Scale Panel Destress Blast at Brunswick Mine," CIM Bulletin, 96(1075), 78-87 (November/December 2003).

Gentier, S., A. Hosni, A. Genter, D. Billaux, F. Dedecker and X. Rachez. "Hydraulic Stimulation of Geothermal Wells in HFR Systems: Approach Based on 3D Hydro-Mechanical Modeling," in Soil and Rock America 2003 (Proceedings of the 39th U.S. Rock Mechanics Symposium, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 2003), pp. 1471-1477. Patricia J. Culligan et al., Eds. Essen: Verlag Glückauf, 2003.

Béchet B., and B. Paris. "Modeling of Heavy Metals Transport from Pavement to Groundwater to Assess the Environmental Impact of the Use of MSWIBA as Sub Road Material," presented at the Workshop on Water Movement and Reactive Transport Modeling in Roads, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, February 2004.

De Dreuzy, J. R., C. Darcel, O. Bour and P. Davy. "Influence of Fracture Correlation on the Permeability of Two-Dimensional Fracture Networks Following a Power-Law Length Distribution," Water Resources Research, 40(1), W01502 10.1029/2003WR002260 (January 2004).

Rong, G., H. C. Zhu and C. B. Zhou. "Experimental Study on Bolting Mechanism of Fully-Grouted Smooth and Thread Re-Bar" Chinese J. Rock Mech. & Rock Engng., 23(3), 469-475 (2003).

Wang, T., E. Zhou, H. C. Zhu and F. Xu. "Deformation Analysis for the Middle Pier of the Permanent Ship Lock if Three Gorges Project," in Technology Roadmap for Rock Mechanics (Proceedings of the 10th Congress of the ISRM, Johannesburg, September 2003), Vol. 2, pp. 1311-1313. Johannesburg: SAIMM, 2003.

Witter, W., and H. Konietzky. "Hangrutschungsrisiko an der Talsperre Schönbrunnn", Wasserbauliche Mitteilungen des Instituts für Wasserbau und THM der TU Dresden, 27, 1-19 (2004).

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of one or more of these articles, we invite you to contact HCItasca for assistance.

   ©2004 HCItasca, Inc.

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