Schnelle Berechnung von Kavernen-konvergenzen aus gemessenen Kopfdrücken

Ruhrgas AG's Epe cavern storage facility, comprising 32 gas caverns with an isothermic working gas volume of 1,5 billion m3, is one of the largest facilities of its kind. It is planned to be extended to approx. 50 caverns in the near future. Due to their different geological locations throughout the site, the Epe caverns sometimes vary considerably in form, volume and depth. A complex user-friendly operating mode program had to be compiled in order to optimally comply with the rock-mechanical, operational and economic marginal conditions for operation of the storage facility. This program was also to be capable of integrating any future expansions. Set-up of such a program is governed to a considerable extent by recording, as accurately as possible, convergence and the relative shift of cavern walls, depending on the individual cavern operating mode. Pipeline Engineering GmbH (PLE) has developed a program to rapidly generate performance diagrams for different operating modes and the resulting cavity convergence and elongation, using a rock-mechanical FEM program. The following optimisation procedure means that the relevant performance diagrams can be accessed without time-consuming FEM calculations. The program structure comprising individual components permits the program to be used individually for other cavern storage facilities after adjusting the input parameters.