The flow characteristics of a gravity-driven dense granular flow in a granular bed with a contracted drainage orifice are studied by using discrete element method and quantitative analysis. Three values of discharging rates, ranging from fast to slow dense flows, are investigated. Time variations and derivatives of mean forces and velocities, as well as their respective correlations, are analyz...

Compensating for intraoperative brain shift using computational models has been used with promising results. Since computational time is an important factor during neurosurgery, a prior knowledge of a patient’s orientation and changes in tissue buoyancy force would be valuable information to aid in predicting shift due to gravitational forces. Since the latter is difficult to quantify intraoper...

It is widely considered that the continued development and production of Alberta’s oil sands deposits is on track to be the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada over the next few decades. As recent developments suggest, failure to address the issue of GHG emissions growth might jeopardize the potential for sustained expansion of oil sands operations in Alberta. Wit...

In spite of many attempts to model dense granular flow, there is still no general theory capable of describing different types of flows, such as gravity-driven drainage in silos and wall-driven shear flows in Couette cells. Here, we summarize our recent proposal of the Stochastic Flow Rule (SFR), which is able to describe these cases in good agreement with experiments, and we focus on testing t...

Steam-Assistant-Gravity-Drainage (SAGD) has become one of the most commonly used thermal recovery processes to extract heavy oil from oil sand reservoirs, especially in Northern Alberta, Canada. However, due to geological history, interbedded shales (IBS) in the reservoir act as barriers due to their low permeability and as such hinder the progression of the steam chamber. Cap-rock integrity al...

Solvent–steam mixture is a key factor in controlling the economic efficiency of the solvent-aided thermal injection process for producing bitumen in a highly viscous oil sands reservoir. This paper depicts a strategy to quickly provide trade-off operating conditions of the Expanding Solvent–Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (ES-SAGD) process based on Pareto-optimality. Response surface models are...

The surface and hydrodynamic forces between individual oil droplets in solution can provide insight into both emulsion stability and processes such as drop coalescence in liquid-liquid extraction. We present the first measurements of the interaction forces between alkane droplets in aqueous solution using atomic force microscopy. The radii of the droplets were well below the capillary lengths f...

In bioreactor landfill, the leachate flow and moisture distribution depend upon saturated and unsaturated hydraulic properties of municipal solid waste (MSW). The effects of unsaturated parameters have not been studied because of scarcity of the data and variation in unsaturated parameters due to MSW heterogeneity, degree of decomposition, and pore structure. In this study, a numerical two-phas...

The maximum volume of liquid bridge left between two vertically mounted spherical particles has been theoretically determined and experimentally measured. As the gravitational effect has not been neglected in the theoretical model, the liquid interface profile is nonsymmetrical around the X-axis. Symmetry in the interface profile only occurs when either the particle size ratio or the gravitatio...

Safe sampling of cord blood can reduce the risk of exposure to infectious agents by obstetric personnel. We developed a new device for collecting umbilical cord blood. Using a modified closed-cup instrument, gravity drainage within the sealed device allows for guarded-needle vacuum tube blood collection. The mean (+/- standard deviation) volume of blood collected with the device was 6.1 +/- 3.1...