Tunnel excavation modeling with micromechanical approaches

A zone with significant irreversible deformations and significant changes in flow and transport properties is expected to be formed around underground excavation in the deep geological layers considered for the high level radioactive waste disposal. The present study concerns the modeling of this phenomena by a micromechanical damage model, based on a Mori-Tanaka homogenization on a cracked media. This anisotropic model is derived from Eshelby homogenized scheme, on which a coupling between damage and friction is taking into account on cracks. Compared to elastoplastic model on tunnel drilling modeling, micromechanical modeling seems very promising: both approaches provide similar EDZ sizes and shapes even if they do not have the same effects on perturbed mechanical behavior; micromechanical model also overcomes the elastoplastic one by a realistic characterization of crack processes.