Deformation and Flow Driven by Osmotic Processes in Porous Materials: Application to Bituminised Waste Materials

This paper presents a coupled Chemo-Hydro-Mechanical (CHM) analysis of the behaviour of leached Bituminized Waste materials (BW). Under geological disposal conditions the main factor that affects the long-term behaviour of this kind of materials is water uptake. First, the long-term behavior of BW in contact with water has been studied. A formulation has been proposed for the analysis of deformation induced by dissolution of salts in porous media in contact with water. The equations include the effect of coupled transport phenomena and the formulation has been included as an extension in the coupled THM program CODE_BRIGHT. The impact of osmotic forces on the swelling of the material has been investigated by simulating water uptake swelling tests under confined conditions. The numerical analysis has proven to be able to furnish a satisfactory representation of the main observed patterns of the behaviour. A sensitivity analysis has also been carried out to examine the effect of various key parameters.