Geomechanical Modeling of Gas Hydrate Bearing Sediments

Abstract:

This contribution focuses on an advance geomechanical model for methane hydrate-bearing soils based on concepts of elasto-plasticity for strain hardening/softening soils and incorporates bonding and damage effects. The core of the proposed model includes: a hierarchical single surface critical state framework, sub-loading concepts for modeling the plastic strains generally observed inside the yield surface and a hydrate enhancement factor to account for the cementing effects provided by the presence of hydrates in sediments. The proposed framework has been validated against recently published experiments involving both, synthetic and natural hydrate soils, as well as different sediments types (i.e., different hydrate saturations, and different hydrates morphologies) and confinement conditions. The performance of the model in these different case studies was very satisfactory.