TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparative verification of hydro-mechanical fracture behavior: Task G of international research project DECOVALEX–2023
AU - Mollaali, Mostafa
AU - Kolditz, Olaf
AU - Hu, Mengsu
AU - Park, Chan-Hee
AU - Park, Jung-Wook
AU - McDermott, Christopher
AU - Chittenden, Neil
AU - Bond, Alexander
AU - Seok Yoon, Jeoung
AU - Zhou, Jian
AU - Pan, Peng-Zhi
AU - Liu, Hejuan
AU - Hou, Wenbo
AU - Lei, Hongwu
AU - Zhang, Liwei
AU - Nagel, Thomas
AU - Barsch, Markus
AU - Wang, Wenqing
AU - Nguyen, Son
AU - Kwon, Saeha
AU - Lee, Changsoo
AU - Yoshioka, Keita
N1 - Funding Information:
CAS: This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52125903)DynaFrax/SSM: This research was supported by the SSM: Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, project number: SSM2020-2758 and Institute for Korean Spent Nuclear Fuel (iKSNF) and Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy) (2021040101003A).KIGAM: This research was supported by the Basic Research Project of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (GP2020-010) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea.KAERI: This research was supported by the Institute for Korea Spent Nuclear Fuel (iKSNF) and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(Ministry of Science and ICT, MSIT) (2021M2E1A1085193).UFZ and TUBAF: We acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the GeomInt2 Project (grant number 03G0899D) for support in the development of the OGS phase-field method. Furthermore, the acknowledgments are extended to the European Joint Programme on Radioactive Waste Management (EURAD WP-DONUT and WP-GAS) within the Horizon 2020-Euratom program under grant agreement No 847593 (2019–2024).Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL): This work was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Office of Nuclear Energy, Spent Fuel and Waste Science and Technology Campaign, under Contract Number DE-AC02-05CH11231 with LBNL.
Funding Information:
DECOVALEX is an international research project comprising participants from industry, government, and academia, focusing on the development of understanding, models, and codes in complex coupled problems in sub-surface geological and engineering applications; DECOVALEX-2023 is the current phase of the project. The authors appreciate and thank the DECOVALEX-2023 Funding Organisations Andra , BASE , BGE , BGR , CAS , CNSC, Canada , COVRA , US DOE , ENRESA , ENSI , JAEA , KAERI, South Korea , RWM , SÚRAO , SSM , and Taipower for their financial and technical support of the work described in this work. The statements made in the [paper/report] are, however, solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Funding Organisations. The project teams want to acknowledge the funding of particular activities feeding into the international DECOVALEX community initiative:
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/10/1
Y1 - 2023/10/1
N2 - Numerical simulations become a necessity when experimental approaches cannot cover the required physical and time scale of interest. One of such area is a simulation of long-term host rock behaviors for nuclear waste disposal and simulation tools involved in the assessment must go through rigorous validation tests. The DECOVALEX project (Development of COupled models and their VAlidation against EXperiments) is dedicated to this purpose by international participants.a This work is part of the ongoing phase DECOVALEX–2023 (D–2023, Task G) particularly aiming to simulate fracture behaviors under various conditions. Here, we cross-verified a variety of numerical methods including continuous and discontinuous approaches against four benchmark exercises with emphasis on numerical accuracy and parameterization of the various numerical approaches. The systematic inter-comparisons of test cases highlight advantages and disadvantages of the different numerical models. Numerical details on discretization effects (e.g. mesh density and orientation) and domain size were investigated in detail for practical applications. It became evident that meticulous attention to mesh resolution and domain size is imperative for achieving accurate numerical simulations, even for static cracks. Moreover, when comparing numerical methods to closed-form solutions for static cracks, all models successfully reproduced the maximum crack opening but encountered challenges near the crack tips. Finally, the paper discusses how to convert between and therefore compare parameters of various numerical approaches. Our benchmark studies reveal that each model necessitates a distinct number of parameters, even in simple scenarios like static crack aperture benchmarks. It is generally more practical to employ fewer parameters to mitigate model over-parameterization and enhance experimental feasibility.
AB - Numerical simulations become a necessity when experimental approaches cannot cover the required physical and time scale of interest. One of such area is a simulation of long-term host rock behaviors for nuclear waste disposal and simulation tools involved in the assessment must go through rigorous validation tests. The DECOVALEX project (Development of COupled models and their VAlidation against EXperiments) is dedicated to this purpose by international participants.a This work is part of the ongoing phase DECOVALEX–2023 (D–2023, Task G) particularly aiming to simulate fracture behaviors under various conditions. Here, we cross-verified a variety of numerical methods including continuous and discontinuous approaches against four benchmark exercises with emphasis on numerical accuracy and parameterization of the various numerical approaches. The systematic inter-comparisons of test cases highlight advantages and disadvantages of the different numerical models. Numerical details on discretization effects (e.g. mesh density and orientation) and domain size were investigated in detail for practical applications. It became evident that meticulous attention to mesh resolution and domain size is imperative for achieving accurate numerical simulations, even for static cracks. Moreover, when comparing numerical methods to closed-form solutions for static cracks, all models successfully reproduced the maximum crack opening but encountered challenges near the crack tips. Finally, the paper discusses how to convert between and therefore compare parameters of various numerical approaches. Our benchmark studies reveal that each model necessitates a distinct number of parameters, even in simple scenarios like static crack aperture benchmarks. It is generally more practical to employ fewer parameters to mitigate model over-parameterization and enhance experimental feasibility.
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijrmms.2023.105530
DO - 10.1016/j.ijrmms.2023.105530
M3 - Article
SN - 1365-1609
VL - 170
JO - International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences
JF - International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences
M1 - 105530
ER -