Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 195, 2020
4th European Conference on Unsaturated Soils (E-UNSAT 2020)
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 04004 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Special Session on Energy Geotechnics | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202019504004 | |
Published online | 16 October 2020 |
Modelling of oedometer tests on pellet-powder bentonite mixtures to support mock-up test analysis
1 Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
2 2 Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN), 92260 Fontenay-aux-Roses, France
* Corresponding author: arisleidy.mesa@upc.edu
Bentonite mixtures of MX-80 (80% of high-density pellets and 20% of bentonite powder on a mass basis) have been recently proposed as a candidate material for sealing deep geological disposals of high-level radioactive waste. A loading/unloading oedometer test at constant water content has been performed on this mixture, which has been modelled using the finite element Code_Bright. The constitutive model used to represent the mechanical response is the Barcelona Expansive Model (BExM), since a multi-modal pore size distribution characterises the pore network of the mixture. During compression at constant water content, an increase in the degree of saturation and a consequent reduction of suction is induced. Consequently, two competing effects occur at different pore-size scales: (a) compression due to mean net stress increase; and (b) expansion on induced suction reduction that mainly affects the micro-porosity level inside aggregates. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to explore these effects, in which the elastic compressibility parameter at the micro-porosity scale for changes in mean effective stress plays an important role.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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