THM behaviour of engineered and natural clay barriers

peer reviewedThis paper is concerned with two problems related to deep underground storage of nuclear waste. On one hand, a small-scale laboratory experiment has allowed to heat and wet a confined swelling clay. A thermo-hydro-mechanical modelling is proposed and discussed. On the other hand, the extent of the damaged zone produced during tunnelling in clay is discussed based on an hydromechanical modelling showing evidences of strain localisation, i.e. a fracture initiation