Long term hydro-mechanical behaviour of Boom Clay

This phD thesis investigates the coupled long term hydro-mechanical behaviour of Boom clay with the focus on the long term permeability and creep damage. The main achievements are as follows: (1) A fully coupled hydro-mechanical model considering the elasto-visco-plastic damage constitutive laws and self-sealing (permeability variation in EDZ/EdZ with time) is established for Boom clay based on long term in situ measurements and laboratory experiments. The developed model is implemented in the FE code ABAQUS. (2) inversion methods were established to back-analysis the in situ 3D stress around HADES, the damage, creep, and self sealing parameters for the developed couple HM model on the the long term in situ measurements (pore pressure, displacement around HADES for about 20 years. (3) Based on the latin hypercube sampling method, a new method for evaluating the sensitivity of system parameters is put forward by Spearman coefficient in non-parameter statistics. (4) finally, the above mentioned development were applied to predict the long-term stability of test drift and connecting gallery in HADES focusing on the evolution of pore water pressure, of EDZ/EdZ as well as that of permeability.