New publication on Full Geomechanical Modeling And Data Management Of A Gas-Storage Facility Using Locas 3D by Benoît Brouard, Vassily Zakharov and Attilio Frangi in Proceedings of Virtual Technical Conference SMRI Fall 2020 is available on the website.

Abstract:

LOCAS is a huge software suite that has been developed continuously for 20+ years, especially for the purpose of analyzing salt caverns. LOCAS is able to couple cavern thermodynamics and rock-salt com-plex geomechanics properly. This is of upmost importance for problems such as gas-storage management, caverns stability analysis, subsidence calculation, or cavern-abandonment.

LOCAS provides a very user-friendly interface, usable by non-experts, which allows input of field data and calculations parameters, and also a very powerful finite-element core for stability analysis of caverns in the short or long term. LOCAS has been designed for all type of salt caverns: for brine production, liquid storage or gas storage -including all type of gases. The new 3D version allows collection of numerous data related to a facility in one single place.

Some features of LOCAS 3D are shown through the example of a gas-storage facility. The whole history of the facility since its creation is modeled and a quick stability analysis is performed.