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Liquid nitrogen (LN2), which can greatly improve the efficiency of hot dry rock (HDR) mining, is commonly used as a cooling material in the enhanced geothermal system (EGS). Physical property, triaxial compression, and permeability tests were undertaken on treated granite samples, for a better scientific understanding of the effect of the LN2 cooling method on the mechanical and permeability properties of the rocks after heat treatment. The experimental results indicated that the physical properties of the treated granite change significantly, such as the density and wave velocity are substantially reduced. Meanwhile, with the increase of treatment temperature, the macroscopic cracks on its surface are gradually generated and the volume is expanded clearly. In addition, the surface wettability of granite gradually increases with increasing temperature. Compared with the air/water cooling methods, under LN2 cooling condition, the mechanical properties decrease markedly. When the temperature exceeds 600°C, the granite strength decreases significantly to only 56.16% of the reference value. The deformation properties also change significantly, with a final strain of about 3% at failure for a sample at 800°C, showing an obvious ductile deformation characteristic. Further, an appreciable correlation also exists between the initial permeability of granite and temperature. Once the temperature exceeds 200°C, the increase in temperature contributes to the increase in initial permeability. In addition to the effect of temperature, the increase in load also leads to a change in the permeability coefficient. When the temperature reaches 600°C, the permeability of granite first decreases and then increases with the increases in axial stress. The results of this paper are valuable in understanding the effect of thermal shock by LN2 on the fracturing efficiency and permeability characteristics of dry hot rocks.

In order to reveal the influence of prophase stress levels on the fatigue damage characteristics of granite, uniaxial fatigue tests of granite with different prophase stress levels were carried out on the basis of the MTS 815.04 rock mechanics test system. The results show that, under the same number of cycles, the failure degree increases with the increase of the prophase stress level. Under the low upper limit of cyclic stress, the tangent modulus and dissipated energy increase significantly with the increase of prophase stress level at the early stage of the cycle loading, while the increasing trend is not obvious with the increase of prophase stress level at the late stage. Under the high upper limit of cyclic stress, the tangent modulus and dissipated energy are less affected by the prophase stress level. The development trend of elastic release energy is not obvious with the increase of prophase stress level, which is less affected by the number of cycles. From the damage parameters defined by dissipative energy, under the low upper limit of cyclic stress, the initial damage is less affected by the prophase stress level. With the increase of the number of cycles, the influence of the prophase stress level on the development trend of the damage variable increases gradually. And the development trend of damage variables shows “C-shaped” damage.

This study proposes an active-controlled hydraulic low-frequency vibration isolator. The vibration isolator can achieve large equivalent mass and quasi-zero dynamic stiffness by combining the fluid inerter with the hydraulic active compensation. Thus, good vibration isolation performance at ultra-low frequency can be realised. The model for the dynamics of the device is set up. The principle of low-frequency vibration isolation is explicated. The natural frequency and its influencing factors are analysed. Finally, preliminary experimental research works are carried out. The results indicate that low-frequency vibration can be effectively isolated by the device proposed in this study.

In this study, a spool actuating mechanism using controlled pressure difference is proposed for a large hydraulic servo valve. The actuating mechanism is accomplished by tuning magneto-rheological (MR) fluid flow. The relationship between the flow rate and the controlled chamber pressure is obtained based on a non-convex constitutive relation of the MR fluid. The control of the pressure difference by tuning the electrical flow is simulated. A series of experiments are carried out on a prototype system; the numerical and experimental results show that the proposed system can produce a very quick pressure change, which can be used to actuate the spool of the hydraulic servo valves for large flow rate applications.