Application of a new thermo-mechanical model for the study of the nuclear waste disposal in clay rocks

Document available in extended abstract form only. One of the cornerstones of the nuclear waste disposal researches concerns the evolution of the damaged zone which can offer a preferential path for migration of radionuclide through modifications of its mechanical and hydraulic properties. Even if the thermo-mechanical behaviour of clays is well documented in the literature, the development of the damaged zone induced by an excavation with temperature is not well known. To investigate this problem, a new thermo-mechanical constitutive law has been implemented in the non-linear finite element code LAGAMINE developed at ULg (Universite de Liege) and has been used to model the PRACLAY experiment (Preliminary demonstration test for clay disposal of vitrified high level radioactive waste) at Mol URL (Underground Research Laboratory). Though several models are being to reproduce the different phenomena met when a thermal loading is applied to a clay specimen, the applications of such thermo-mechanical models to simulate large scale in-situ experiment are rare. Based on the work of Sultan a new thermo-mechanical constitutive law has been implemented in combination with a Cap model in the code LAGAMINE. The Cap model is a combination of a frictional criterion, a Cam-Clay model and a traction criterion. The influence of the temperature is considered through the thermo-mechanical law developed by Cui et al. (2000). This law permits to reproduce common features of the thermo-mechanical behaviour of clay, such as the decrease of the pre-consolidation pressure with temperature, the volume change, the thermal hardening, the transition between thermal dilation and thermal contraction for over-consolidated clays. These aspects are modelled with two curves in the (p',T) plane. The first one is related to the generation of the thermal volumetric plastic strains (TY curve (Thermal Yield)). The second one reproduces the decrease of the pre-consolidation pressure with the temperature (LY curve (Loading Yield)). This one may be considered analogous with the LC curve (Loading Collapse) met in the Barcelona Basic Model dedicated to unsaturated soil mechanics. This thermo-mechanical law has been used to model the PRACLAY experiment and particularly to analyse the evolution of the damaged zone with temperature. In this study, the damaged zone is considered as the sum of two plastic strain components, a deviatoric and a volumetric one. The deviatoric strains are induced when the internal friction criterion is reached while the volumetric strains are a consequence of the Cam - Clay model or the TY curve. The results of the evolution of the deviatoric strain show that the magnitude of this strain is modified near the wall but the extension of the size of the plastic deviatoric zone is not affected by temperature. The modification of the deviatoric strain near the wall can be explained by hydro-mechanical coupling caused by thermally induced excess pore water pressure which permits the stress path to reach the internal friction criterion. Concerning the volumetric plastic strains, these follow the effect of the thermal load and the size of the zone affected by these strains correspond to the zone affected by the temperature. On the contrary the magnitude of the strain depends on the state of stress of the clay as observed near the wall. Indeed, the stresses near the wall are reduced due to the process of excavation and the state of stress exhibits a kind of over-consolidation effect where only thermal dilation is possible. In that modelling, the set of parameters chosen doesn't allow the activation of the LY curve. Finally the results obtained with this new thermo-mechanical law have been compared with results obtained with other thermo-mechanical law, that is to say with ACMEG-T which is a thermo-plastic law developed at EPFL and a classical thermo-elastic law. The comparison shows that the results obtained with the two thermo-plastic constitutive laws are in good agreement concerning both the deviatoric and the volumetric strain. (authors)