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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Explosively produced fracture of oil shale. Progress report, January-March 1982

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:7016520

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is conducting rock fragmentation research in oil shale to develop the blasting technologies and designs required to prepare a rubble bed for a modified in situ retort. The first section of this report presents a mid-FY review of our rock fragmentation program. It outlines our experimental work with the Oil Shale Consortium at the Anvil Points Mine in Colorado, detailing experiment schedules, general results, and site geology. It also describes our current and planned computer modeling development for rock fracture, tracer flow, oil shale retorting, and retort stability. The second section presents three papers on computer modeling and theory. The first details our progress in understanding rock breakage through computer simulations of multiple-borehole blasting designs that are compared with field experiment results. The second considers the propagation of a penny-shaped crack in a triaxial state of stress and the effect of fragmentation on the stability of closed cracks in normal compressions. The final paper discusses a revision of the rate formulation of the constitutive law for a flawed material. 16 figures.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab., NM (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
7016520
Report Number(s):
LA-9441-PR; ON: DE83002303
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English