Stability Analysis of Methane Hydrate-Bearing Soils Considering Dissociation

Hiromasa Iwai, Sayuri Kimoto, Toshifumi Akaki and Fusao Oka
Additional contact information
Hiromasa Iwai: Department of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Industrial Management Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Building-16, room-226, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
Sayuri Kimoto: Department of Civil & Earth Resources Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyotodaigaku Katsura 4, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8540, Japan
Toshifumi Akaki: Department of Civil & Earth Resources Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyotodaigaku Katsura 4, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8540, Japan
Fusao Oka: Kyoto University, Tanaka-Asukai-cho 138-1, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8226, Japan

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-32

Abstract: It is well known that the methane hydrate dissociation process may lead to unstable behavior such as large ground deformations, uncontrollable gas production, etc. A linear instability analysis was performed in order to investigate which variables have a significant effect on the onset of the instability behavior of methane hydrate-bearing soils subjected to dissociation. In the analysis a simplified viscoplastic constitutive equation is used for the soil sediment. The stability analysis shows that the onset of instability of the material system mainly depends on the strain hardening-softening parameter, the degree of strain, and the permeability for water and gas. Then, we conducted a numerical analysis of gas hydrate-bearing soil considering hydrate dissociation in order to investigate the effect of the parameters on the system. The simulation method used in the present study can describe the chemo-thermo-mechanically coupled behaviors such as phase changes from hydrates to water and gas, temperature changes and ground deformation. From the numerical results, we found that basically the larger the permeability for water and gas is, the more stable the simulation results are. These results are consistent with those obtained from the linear stability analysis.

Keywords: methane hydrate-bearing soil; dissociation process; linear stability analysis; chemo-thermo-mechanically coupled analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/6/5381/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/6/5381/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:6:p:5381-5412:d:50764

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().