Posts Tagged ‘oil’
Is U.S. High-Speed Rail Worth the Cost?
For nearly 5,000 high school students in this year’s M3 Challenge, that’s the $100,000 question
Anyone who has filled their gas tank—or just passed by a gas station—in the past few weeks knows that the cost of gas is on the rise again. Gas prices today are 10 percent higher than they were a year ago and are projected to reach $5.00 a gallon in some parts of the country by Memorial Day.
This is a major reason why our country’s leaders are revisiting the need to establish alternate methods of transportation that are less influenced by oil prices. Just last month, a federal highway bill that would overhaul transportation programs and available funding for mass transit was heatedly debated in Congress.
This past weekend, thousands of high school students also weighed in on the mass transit issue, as competing teams in Moody’s Mega Math (M3) Challenge, an Internet-based applied-math modeling contest organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in All News, News, Student News | 
Tags: applied math, energy, math modeling, Moody's, Moody's Mega Math Challenge, oil, transportation | 
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A math-based model for deep-water oil drilling
Oil well control is one of the most important processes during drilling operations. In deepwater drilling, controlling pressure in the oil well is crucial, as excessive pressures in the drilled hole can result in blowouts, leading to disastrous events like the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.
The deeper the well, the higher the pressure, and the higher the risks associated with tapping oil from wells. During drilling, when the pressure applied to balance the hydrocarbon pressure in a well is not great enough to overcome that exerted by gas and fluids in the rock formation drilled, water, gas, oil, or other formation fluid can enter the hole. This is called a “gas kick,” which in worst-case scenarios can lead to blowouts.
In a paper published earlier this month in the SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis, author Steinar Evje presents new analysis of a mathematical model that has applications to the study of such gas kicks in deep-water oil wells. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in All News, Research News, SIAM Nuggets | Tags: applied math, drilling, math modeling, oil, SIAM Journals, siam nuggets | Comments Closed