Electrical properties of tuff from the ESF as a function of water saturation and temperature

The electrical properties of partially saturated tuff provide information about the microstructure of the matrix and how water is distributed within the pore space as the material undergoes saturation and desaturation cycles. Understanding electrical properties as a function of saturation and temperature is also important because the determination of water saturation during field tests and laboratory experiments depends of reliable laboratory data. Spatial distribution and temporal variation of moisture content in the rock mass in the repository horizontal is one of the most important parameters needed in order to understand coupled TMHC processes. Geophysical methods are required to determine the moisture content in rock masses during thermal tests. These data are currently used in the inversion of electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurements at the LBT, SHT, and the DST tests. This paper contains a description of the experimental procedure, sample preparation, data collection and data analyses for tuff samples from the ESF