Hydro-mechanical modelling of the Excavation Damaged Zone around an underground excavation at Mont Terri Rock Laboratory

A zone with significant irreversible deformations and significant changes in flow and transport properties is expected to be formed in indurated clay around underground excavations. The stress perturbation around the excavation could lead to a significant increase of the permeability, related to diffuse and/or localized crack propagation in the material. The main objective of the study is to model these processes at large scale in order to assess their impacts on the performance of radioactive waste geological repositories. This paper concerns more particularly the hydro-mechanical modelling of a long term dilatometer experiment performed in Mont Terri Rock Laboratory in Switzerland within the Selfrac Project. The proposed model defines the permeability as a function of the aperture of the cracks that are generated during the excavation. With this model, the permeability tensor becomes anisotropic. Advantages and drawbacks of this approach are described thanks to the results of the Selfrac long term dilatometer experiment.