Deep geological repositories are a feasible and reliable way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, and the mechanical and thermal properties of the host rock are key factors in their long-term safety. The mechanical properties of rock, including uniaxial compressive strength, tension strength and elastic modulus are thermally-dependent - for example, the uniaxial compressive strength of rock will decrease with increasing temperature, as a result of thermally-induced cracks between mineral particles. However, thermally-induced cracks and the micro-mechanisms of rock damage are difficult to observe by experiments. We therefore used uniaxial compressive strength test and Brazilian disk PFC models with heterogeneous thermal expansion properties to reveal the micro-mechanisms of rock damage induced by thermal heating.
Based on the mineral compositions of granite, heterogeneous models contained four particle types with different thermal expansion properties (quartz, potassium feldspar, plagioclase, and biotite). A series of heating simulations (temperature increment: ΔT = 80 – 300 °C) showed that thermally-induced cracks occurred when the temperature increment exceeded 250 °C, and that the main crack type was tension crack. In homogeneous PFC models no thermally-induced cracking occurred even at ∆T = 300 °C. In simulations of thermal-mechanical coupling, the heterogeneous PFC models have the advantage of revealing differences in radius expansion of various mineral particles with increasing temperature, resulting in the additional and uneven distribution of contact force, stress concentration between different particles and bond breaking, and it lead to decreases in uniaxial compressive strength, elastic modulus and initial crack stress.
In the construction and operation of deep geological repositories of nuclear waste, the physical and mechanical properties of host rock are influenced by excavations and decay heat induced by the installation of nuclear waste canisters. This may result in a variety of changes in rock porosity and seepage conditions in the rock mass, the formation of excavation damage zones and the occurrence of thermally-induced rock damage, etc. Thermally-induced damage results from heterogeneous thermal properties in rock - for example, the thermal expansion coefficient of quartz (24.3 × 10−6 /°C) is three times that of biotite (8.0 × 10–6 /°C), leading to the differential expansion of mineral volume and macro-mechanical properties of rock with increasing temperature. In order to understand and interpret the influences of thermally-induced damage on the mechanical behavior of rock, homogeneous and heterogeneous bonded particle models were adopted to simulate a uniaxial compressive test (UCS) and Brazilian indirect tensile test in this study.
