Numerical Simulation of Permafrost Deformation

One of the important stages of studying complex geological formations, such as permafrost rocks, is numerical modeling of various physical processes occurring in them. This makes it possible to analyze geophysical fields under different action modes, as well as to estimate the effective properties of such media in dynamics. In this work, we perform numerical simulation of the stress-strain state of porous rock containing ice during thawing at discrete points in time. Thus, a stationary problem of elastic deformation at different ratios of ice and water in the pore space is solved at each stage. It should be noted that the phase transition of water contained in pores from the solid state to the liquid state is not considered, as well as hydrodynamic processes in the liquid phase, but the results obtained in earlier works are used. Based on numerical simulations of elastic deformation under uniaxial stress and shear, the effective elasticity tensors are calculated. Since various mesh artifacts may arise when building a numerical mesh model of a real porous geological medium, including at the media interfaces, we considered two variants of images: with spherical pores with smooth boundaries and a sample approximating a real medium, that is, with non-smooth pores forming cluster structures. Analysis of the results showed that mesh artifacts at the pore boundaries has a significant effect on the effective elasticity tensor. However, additional validation with physical data is necessary.