On Spatial Interpolation of Ground Temperature from Temperature Logs of Monitoring Wells

Introduction

Non-asymptotic numerical simulation of transient heat transfer requires knowledge of initial conditions. If the heat transfer medium is ground, they typically use temperature logs (depth-temperature tables) of monitoring wells for the initial time point. Then one may either use scattered-data interpolation [1] or solve a steady heat transfer problem with Dirichlet boundary conditions at temperature measurement points. If you choose the second way and the problem is nonlinear, there might be some convergence issues.
Ground Temperature Interpolation Based on Temperature Measurement Points

Figure 1: Ground Temperature Interpolation in Frost 3D Universal

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How to Eliminate Blank Space Error While Building a New NVIDIA CUDA Runtime Project in Microsoft Visual Studio

Assume the developer has Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, 2010 or 2012 and NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 5.5 installed on the PC. If the Windows username contains a blank space, then building a new NVIDIA CUDA 5.5 Runtime project might fail. Typically, this error is either “Could not setup the environment for Microsoft Visual Studio using …” referring to the files of vcvars32.bat or vsvars32.bat, or “stumbling” over a blank space in the name of the user’s home directory (see the screenshots below).

Build errors of a new NVIDIA CUDA 5.5 Runtime project in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

Build error of a new NVIDIA CUDA 5.5 Runtime project in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Build errors of a new NVIDIA CUDA 5.5 Runtime project in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. Error D8022

More details on these errors can be found in the build log if the verbose logging is on: use --verbose command line option of NVCC (CUDA C/C++ compilation driver).

To fix the problem you may choose any of the following ways:

  1. Create a new user account without a blank space in the name (be careful with the previous user data!),
  2. Set the user environment variable TEMP to a path that doesn’t contain a space (the folder at this path must exist), e.g. C:\Temp,
  3. Insert into the text file %CUDA_PATH%/bin/nvcc.profile, where %CUDA_PATH% may look like C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v5.5, the line “TEMP=path_without_space”, where path_without_space is the path that doesn’t contain a blank space (the folder at the path must exist), e. g. C:\Temp.

CUDA Project Template for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE has a lot of standard templates for a New Visual C++ Project. But when using such parallel programming tool as NVidia CUDA Toolkit 5.0 (without any add-ins) one has to set every new C++ CUDA project manually.

Fortunately, the routine of setting becomes automated after installing the free CUDA VS Wizard 2.9. In few clicks one may create an empty CUDA project that compiles on Win32 configuration. To compile on x64 (see item 2) and to achieve purely cosmetic effects (items 3 and 4) complete the following steps.

1. Find the IDE installation folder, e.g. C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0. Further it is denoted as $(VSInstallDir).

2. Open the file $(VSInstallDir)/VC/VCWizards/CUDA/CUDAWinApp/Scripts/1033/default.js in a text editor. Find all occurrences of the path «$(CUDA_PATH)\lib» and replace them with «$(CUDA_PATH)/lib/$(PlatformName);».

3. Add the line «CUDAWinApp.vsz| |CUDAWinApp|1|A sample CUDA application.| |6777| |CUDAWinApp» to the text file $(VSInstallDir)/VC/vcprojects/vc.vsdir.

4. Correct the text of the hint «TODO: Wizard Description.», changing it to «A sample CUDA application.», in the file $(VSInstallDir)/VC/vcprojects/CUDA/CUDAWinApp.vsdir

The transfer of boundary conditions on an orthogonal hexahedral mesh

In the simulation of physical processes and phenomena overall there is a problem of numerical solutions of differential problems in partial derivatives. One of the methods for numerical solutions of mathematical physics equations is the approach, based on the finite difference approximation. However, the major drawback of this method is the need to use orthogonal hexahedral mesh. While solving problems in practice, sometimes a complex geometric configuration of the computational domain (for example, see Figure 1) is used, and therefore, the drawback, mentioned above, is enough critical.

Picture 1 – The example of a complex surface as a part of the computational domain

Due to the aforesaid, there is quite a natural problem of the geometrical configuration approximation of computational domain by cell faces of the given orthogonal hexahedral mesh.

Let us turn to a more detailed problem statement. Let the computational mesh in 3D space be orthogonal and hexahedral. Namely, let be a set of mesh divisions along axis arranged in ascending order, similar to it let us introduce the ordered sets of mesh divisions along and respectively. According to designations, the following set of points is the set nodes of computational mesh . Geometric configuration that requires approximation by mesh faces, is defined by triangulated surface. Let be a set of triangles. This set is a part of surface triangulation, and its quantity is .With the numerical solution of mathematical physics problem, besides geometric approximation of surface by faces of mesh cells there is a problem of adequate transfer of triangulated surface area on cells faces, involved in its approximation. Thus, by means of set of triangles it is necessary to determine the set of faces of mesh cells, that approximate the triangulated surface, and match the transferred area with each of such face.

Let us give the algorithm, which solves the set above problem

1) Let us consider the mesh, which is dual to the initial one, i.e. such a mesh the nodes of which are cells centers of the initial computational mesh. Let us store a 3D array of real numbers, elements of which correspond to the cells of dual mesh. First of all we initialize elements of array by zeros.

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Quasilinear Heat Equation in Three Dimensions and Stefan Problem in Permafrost Ground in the Frame of Alternating Directions Finite Difference Scheme

You can read the original article at the World Congress Engineering web site.

 

Abstract — The quasilinear heat equation with thermal conductivity and heat capacity depending on the temperature field in three spatial dimensions is studied in application to the phase transition problem in permafrost ground. The conditions under which the alternating directions Douglas – Rachford finite difference scheme retains numerical stability are explicitly formulated. The comparison with the known analytical similarity solution to the Stefan problem in one spatial dimension is performed.

Index Terms—quasilinear heat equation, Stefan problem, finite differences, alternating directions scheme, numerical stability.

I. INTRODUCTION

Since the early formulations of the alternating directions implicit methods (ADI methods) [1], [2], they have been tremendously developed and found a vast number of applications [3], [4]. Nevertheless, serious difficulties are encountered with the use of these methods in application to problems with complex geometries [5] and/or nonlinear equations of mathematical physics [6].

Although the schemes of the ADI methods are proved to be efficient and economic with respect to time consumption and, in most cases, unconditionally stable, they exhibit some disadvantages:

1) Their finite-difference formulations permit to consider only rectangular spatial domains (due to commutativity requirements imposed on the factorized and split operators) [7];

2) The application of the ADI schemes to the problems with Neumann and Robin boundary conditions that are varying in time encounters serious problems due to the necessity of evaluation or approximation of these boundary conditions at the intermediate steps of the scheme [8];

3) When applied to the solution of nonlinear heat equations, the operators constituting an ADI scheme do not commute, thus leading to the loss of unconditional stability of the scheme [6].

The first of the above disadvantages can be overcome either by the use of finite elements methods in conjunction with operator splitting techniques, or by domain decomposition techniques. The second and the third disadvantages present an important problem for the successful application of the ADI scheme. To the best of our knowledge, no complete stability analysis for an ADI scheme applied to the nonlinear heat equation in a three-dimensional spatial domain is available in the literature, thus motivating this work.

Another motivation for the present work is the application of ADI scheme to the modeling of heat transfer in large scale environmental systems (e.g., large areas of permafrost ground) which, in the case of purely explicit finite-differences schemes, imposes stiff constraints on the time-step in order to guarantee the numerical stability. At the same time, implementation of implicit schemes can often lead to much greater computing expenses than that of explicit schemes, especially for the problems with rapidly changing coefficients in complex geometries and substantially nonhomogeneous meshes. Thus, in modeling of heat transfer in large scale systems the necessity of making an optimal choice between explicit and implicit schemes arises. In case of finite-elements method, applied to modeling of processes in permafrost ground, the analysis of numerical stability appears to be so complex, that the stability criterion is often established empirically [9].

In the present paper we discuss the application of the ADI Douglas – Rachford scheme to the solution of Stefan problem in porous permafrost ground. The paper is organized as follows: next section contains the problem formulation and some assumptions that will be used in the proof of numerical stability of the ADI scheme while section 3 exposes the proof itself. Section 4 presents some numerical results and is followed by Conclusions.

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3D geological modeling based on boreholes data

Introduction

3D geological modeling is a very actual issue nowadays in building development, environmental assessment of ground (variably-saturated porous medium) pollution, assessment of mineral deposits, etc. There are different approaches to solve this problem by means of modern software designed for simulation in geology [1-3]. The most frequently used method is that of reconstructing geological model. This method is based on information about the levels of geological horizons occurrence received from the results of drilling [4-6]. The implementation of this method itself may have some peculiarities.

In this article an alternative approach for 3D geological model creation is being proposed. It is based on the following:
1) Surface triangulation of site topology
2) Automatic cross-section generation
3) Segment height interpolation for each layer of geological model.
This approach allows both simplify and accelerate 3D geological model creation while maintaining acceptable 3D site building accuracy.

The proposed method consists of six basic steps described below. The following information on boreholes is considered as given data: 1) borehole coordinates; 2) seamark; 3) capacity of geological horizons.

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Partitioning a segment with optional thickening toward ends

Preface:

The initial line segment is partitioned with “obligatory” points (they should be mesh nodes), which can both be or not be points of thickening. On each part of the segment the method of subpartitioning, described below, can be applied.

Let  – be the minimum acceptable step,  – be the maximum acceptable step and let  be the length of the segment, where . Then the minimal possible number of steps equals – , and the maximal possible is – . If , then the problem statement is incorrect. Assume that .

If both edges of the segment do not require thickening, we can take a uniform partition with any number of steps   so that .

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Fast volume computing algorithm of arbitrary polyhedron in 3D space

Introduction

Computing of the volume of polyhedron in 3D space isn’t a trivial problem, but the following trivial method exists: dividing the volume into simple pyramids and counting the sum of these volumes. However, this methodology is difficult for implementation, as well as it is resource-intensive and slow. What is more, computing algorithm according to this methodology is difficult to parallelize. And taking into account trends in the field of parallel computing on GPU development, the ability to increase the rate of computing repeatedly is being lost.

In this article the algorithm for determining the volume of arbitrary geometry in 3D space in terms of fast computing is described.

Input data

Preparatory step. A rectangular grid (pos.1 on fig.1) around geometry (pos.2 on fig.1) is built using its minimum and maximum coordinates.

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Alternate directions implicit scheme for a non-linear heat equation

This third Note is dedicated to the discussion of application of the 3D Douglas – Rachford ADI scheme to the solution of a non-linear heat equation. We will discuss the Newton – Raphson method and the “method of frozen coefficients”.

Before starting discussion of how to approach solution of a non-linear equation, let us define what will be called a non-linear heat equation.
Below, we will consider a heat equation with temperature dependent thermal conductivity and heat capacity. Thus, the coefficients of the heat equation appear to be temperature dependent:

, (1)
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