Effects of Short-Term Mechanical Loads on the Cracking of Glass Tubes in a 500-m-Deep Rock Formation
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 144, Issue 3
Abstract
To determine the reliability of deep geological repositories for radioactive waste, understanding the mechanical interactions between the host rock and structures is of great importance. Among repository concepts, high-level activity waste disposal cells consist of drilled underground horizontal microtunnels with a steel casing (0.9 m diameter). The French Andra’s Underground Research Laboratory conducts ongoing research activities to characterize the casing reliability over an initial period of at least 100 years, for reversibility purposes. Several experiments are dedicated to short-term mechanical analyses of the 500-m-deep host rock formation. Due to the complex hydromechanical response of the rock to drilling, unintuitive mechanical loadings are observed in comparison with the surrounding lithostatic equilibrium stress state. In this work, these short-term mechanical loads applied on glass tubes inside a borehole are investigated. A finite-element model is developed to predict adequate load scenarios, source of the anisotropic continuum damage.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the French national radioactive waste management agency, Andra, for the financial support of this work. The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Marcoule (LCLT), France, and its collaborators are also gratefully acknowledged for their support with the use of the developed continuum damage mechanics code.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 144 • Issue 3 • March 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 16, 2016
Accepted: Aug 10, 2017
Published online: Jan 4, 2018
Published in print: Mar 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Jun 4, 2018
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