5th October 2007 

The first of our research sabbatical programs has now finished with Dr William Sassi returning home to France and his position at IFP after a year working with us in Glasgow developing workflows for 4DMove.

William brought expertise as a research advisor with him to Glasgow, along with his guitar, and enlived both the local music scene and our research activities here in Midland Valley! 

The program was fully funded by Midland Valley and over the year William worked with us a full time team member with a broadly based technical brief.  In particular William was involved in background research for our 4DMove project and in particular he explored the concept of using standard workflows and analogue models to devolop comparisons and base case workflow reference for both model building and 4D analysis. This project will continue and for the first time it allows us to fully quantify the structural development of an analogue model and to compare this with the results of both forward and reverse modelling using numerical methods. This is significant as it allows us to calibrate palinspastic models for use in basin modelling and in using strain history as a constraint in rservoir and fracture modelling.

During the year, William continued his involvement with the AAPG distinguished lecturer program and presented papers at AAPG Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California and the EGU 2007 Vienna in April and also ran an internal training at MVE on Forland and thrust basins. William is planning several additional publications based on this work and with Midland Valley hopes to continue this work with industry and academic support.

Abstracts and Publications list:
Shackleton R., Seed, G., Sassi, W.; Jones, S.; Grocott J., (2007) Structural Interpretation Using a Three Dimensional Mass-Spring Restoration. AAPG Annual Meeting April 1-4, 2007, Long Beach, California

SASSI W., “Fluid-assisted rock deformation and tectonics” organized by Y.M.
Leroy and Y. Gueguen, at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France on 12 -13 April 2007 From Kink migration kinematics to detachment and Fault-propagation folding: recent advances in structural interpretation software. EGU 2007 April 15-21 2007, Vienna, Austria.

Sassi, W.; Jones, S.; Seed, G.; Shackleton, R.; Krus, M. (2007) Brittle-ductile mechanics of sedimentary basins: advances in 4D kinematic and dynamic deformation models for structural interpretation (solicited) EGU.