Acknowledgement

For further details see Issue 1 of Render, the newsletter for IRIS Explorer users.

Background

• Work done for Swedish Nuclear Fuels and Waste Management Co
• Development of deep repository for spent nuclear fuel
• Field studies identify rock fractures
• Numerical modelling of fluid flow in fractured rock
• PHOENICS used as CFD solver

Tunnels in the rock

• Access tunnel excavated down to 450m
• Also elevator shaft & exptl. tunnels
• Tunnel network displayed here
• Textured cylinders read in using ReadGeom
• Labels added outside IRIS Explorer

Fractures in the rock

• Major fracture zones cross the tunnels
• Determined from field studies
• Displayed here using LatToGeom
• Labels added outside IRIS Explorer
• Expect inflow to occur where fracture zones cross the tunnel

Flow in the rock

• Conductivity determined from fracture data
• Plotted on plane using LatToGeom and GenerateColormap. Blue = high
• Fluid flow calculated at nodes of grid
• Displayed using Vectors
• Observe correlation between conductivity and flow

Pressure in the rock

• Fluid pressure calculated at grid nodes
• Displayed using IsosurfaceLat
• Observe low pressure region in lower part of elevator shaft
• Caused by major inflow to elevator

Conclusions

• Visualisations extremely useful
• Well-received by other engineers
• IRIS Explorer does excellent job here
• Would like
  • More modules for handling arbitrary slicing in volumetric datasets
  • Reader for PHOENICS output Currently under development at NAG, 1994