A Coupled Thermal–Hydrological–Mechanical Damage Model and Its Numerical Simulations of Damage Evolution in APSE
This paper proposes a coupled thermal–hydrological–mechanical damage (THMD) model for the failure process of rock, in which coupling effects such as thermally induced rock deformation, water flow-induced thermal convection, and rock deformation-induced water flow are considered. The damage is considered to be the key factor that controls the THM coupling process and the heterogeneity of rock is characterized by the Weibull distribution. Next, numerical simulations on excavation-induced damage zones in Äspö pillar stability experiments (APSE) are carried out and the impact of in situ stress conditions on damage zone distribution is analysed. Then, further numerical simulations of damage evolution at the heating stage in APSE are carried out. The impacts of in situ stress state, swelling pressure and water pressure on damage evolution at the heating stage are simulated and analysed, respectively. The simulation results indicate that (1) the v-shaped notch at the sidewall of the pillar is predominantly controlled by the in situ stress trends and magnitude; (2) at the heating stage, the existence of confining pressure can suppress the occurrence of damage, including shear damage and tensile damage; and (3) the presence of water flow and water pressure can promote the occurrence of damage, especially shear damage.
Thermohydromechanical simulations of the natural cooling stage of the Tunnel Sealing Experiment
Abstract The Tunnel Sealing Experiment (TSX), located on the 420 Level of the Underground Research Laboratory (URL) of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), was used to study the behaviour of two bulkheads installed in situ: one composed of highly compacted bentonite-sand blocks, the other composed of low-heat high-performance concrete. Permeable sand was placed in an 11.2-m-long chamber between the bulkheads. The chamber was first pressurized with water to 4 MPa to simulate the conditions likely to develop in the period following installation of seals in an actual repository. A stage of circulating hot water in the chamber began on 2002 September 24. The maximum design temperature of 85 °C at the interior face of the bulkheads could not be achieved in the time available. The actual maximum temperature was 65 °C. The purpose of heating was to investigate the thermohydromechanical responses in the bulkheads and surrounding rock to increased temperature. A passive cooling stage followed the heating stage. To help understand the influence of natural cooling on the thermohydromechanical response, a series of coupled thermohydromechanical modelling exercises was carried out using the finite element program, Model Of Transport In Fractured/porous media (MOTIF), and the results were compared with measured data. The thermal response in the rock and the bulkheads was successfully simulated. The influence of hydraulic conductivity on the hydraulic response in the clay bulkhead was analyzed.
Numerical Implementation of Thermally and Hydraulically Coupled Processes in Non-Isothermal Porous Media
Abstract To better understand the coupling of thermal (T), hydraulic (H) and mechanical (M) processes (T-H-M processes) and their influence on the system behaviour, models allowing T-H-M coupling are developed. These models allow simulations in the near-field of the system. Such a model has been developed within the simulator RockFlow/RockMech. This paper concentrates on the thermal and hydraulic processes. For those processes, the material parameters and state variables are highly non-linear and mostly functions of temperature, saturation and pressure. This paper shows how these dependencies are formulated mathematically and are implemented into RockFlow/RockMech. The implementation allows phase changes between the fluid phases (gas and liquid) to occur explicitly. The model allows the simulation of very low permeability clays with high capillary pressures. An example for code validation is shown, where low permeability clay is desaturated, lastly, current work on the calculations performed in the near field study (BMT1) of the DECOVALEX III project is outlined.