Bentonite Mechanical Evolution
© 2017 LMS
The Laboratory for Soil Mechanics is involved in the project BEACON (Bentonite Mechanical Evolution) funded by the European Union.
The project, which started in June 2017 and involves 25 european partners, aims at improving the numerical models for predicting the behaviour of bentonite seals, buffers and backfills in the context of deep nuclear waste disposal. The focus will be on understanding the homogenisation of the material that will take place upon water uptake from the surrounding host rock. Robust numerical tools, able to predict the long term performance of such elements are key technical issues for the implementation of planned geological disposals.
Jose Bosch, PhD student at LMS, will contribute to the task by enhancing the constitutive model ACMEG, succesfuly used to predict the behaviour of a broad range of geomaterials, to deal with the expansive features that characterize bentonite-based materials. The model will then be implemented in the finite element code LAGAMINE in order to model the long term evolution of deep geological repositories. In parallel, a set of experiments will be performed to improve the understanding of relevant physical processes such as bentonite-steel interface interactions.