Development of a numerical approach to simulate compressed air energy storage subjected to cyclic internal pressure

Abstract

This paper analyzes the long-term response of unlined energy storage located at shallow depth to improve the distance between a wind farm and storage. The numerical approach follows the hybrid scheme that combined a mechanical constitutive model to extract stress and strains at the first cycle and polynomial-type strain accumulation functions to track the progressive plastic deformation. In particular, the strain function includes the fundamental features that requires simulating the long-term response of geomaterials: volumetric strain (terminal void ratio) and shear strain (shakedown and ratcheting), the strain accumulation rate, and stress obliquity. The model is tested with a triaxial strain boundary condition under different stress obliquities. The unlined storage subjected to cyclic internal stress is simulated with different storage geometries and stress amplitudes that play a crucial role in estimating the long-term mechanical stability of underground storage. The simulations present the evolution of ground surface, yet their incremental rate approaches towards a terminal void ratio. With regular and smooth displacement fields for the large number of cycles, the inflection point is estimated with the previous surface settlement model.