Trade remedies are government measures to minimize the adverse impact of imports on domestic industries. Anti-dumping duties are used to counter the effects of imports sold at unfairly low prices on the domestic market. Countervailing duties are used to counter the price effects of imports that benefit from government subsidies in the exporting countries. Safeguard remedies (also called Section 201 and escape clause remedies) are used to reduce the injurious impact of surges in fairly trade imports.

The main objectives of this project are to quantify the changes in fracture porosity and multi-phase transport properties as a function of confining stress. These changes will be integrated into conceptual and numerical models that will improve our ability to predict and optimize fluid transport in fractured system. This report details our progress on: (1) developing the direct experimental measurements of fracture aperture and topology using high-resolution x-ray micro-tomography, (2) modeling of fracture permeability in the presence of asperities and confining stress, and (3) simulation of two-phase fluid flow in a fracture and a layered matrix. The three-dimensional surface that describes the large-scale structure of the fracture in the porous medium can be determined using x-ray micro-tomography with significant accuracy. The distribution of fracture aperture is a difficult issue that we are studying and developing methods of quantification. The difficulties are both numerical and conceptual. Numerically, the three-dimensional data sets include millions, and sometimes, billions of points, and pose a computational challenge. The conceptual difficulties derive from the rough nature of the fracture surfaces, and the heterogeneous nature of the rock matrix. However, the high-resolution obtained by the imaging system provides us a much needed measuring environment on rock samples …