Shrinkage characteristics of buffer-backfilling materials in high-level radioactive waste geological disposal

International audienceThe shrinkage characteristics of buffer-backfilling materials play an important role in the security and stability of the high-level radioactive waste geological disposal system. COx argillite is considered as a kind of potential buffer-backfilling materials in France. In this investigation, both the initially saturated compacted COx specimens and the paste-like COx specimens are prepared and subjected to different test methods to study their volumetric shrinkage behaviours. For the compacted specimens, it is found that the volumetric shrinkage deformation is significantly influenced by the initial dry density; the shrinkage limit, shrinkage efficiency and shrinkage strain decrease with the increasing dry density; in addition, it is observed that the shrinkage direction of specimens shows obvious anisotropism. For example, at low degree of compaction, the radial shrinkage strain is higher than axial shrinkage strain, and the shrinkage geometry factor is larger than 3; however, the contrary results are obtained at high degree of compaction. For the paste-like specimens, three shrinkage stages can be distinguished: normal shrinkage, residual shrinkage and zero shrinkage; most of the volume shrinkage deformation occurs before the air-entry point while the soil is still fully saturated. A group of four general shrinkage models are employed to fit the shrinkage curve of the paste-like specimens. The results show that the G & C model can get the highest performance for the present soil