Coupled Two-Phase Flow and Elastodamage Modeling of Laboratory and In Situ Gas Injection Experiments in Saturated Claystone as a Potential Host Rock for Nuclear Waste Repository

Abstract

Understanding gas migration behavior in host rocks is of importance to the safety evaluation of deep geological repositories for nuclear waste. Experimental results reported in the literature show that gas flow in saturated claystone is through a highly localized network of dilatant pathways and that water is barely displaced. To explain the specific gas migration behavior, a two-scale approach is developed. A subcritical criterion for microcrack propagation is proposed to represent the time-dependent damage at the macroscale. The passage from microscale to macroscale is implemented through an asymptotic homogenization method. The solid mechanics is coupled with the fluid flow through pore pressure variation and an intrinsic permeability model, which implicitly accounts for the fracture opening induced permeability change. The developed model is tested against both laboratory and in situ gas injection experiments in the literature. Some key experimental findings, such as the development of preferential gas pathways and the fully saturated state are explicitly captured by the poroelastic damage model. Model results explain that the highly localized fracture pathways are the major places where gas and water interact with each other, and as a result the whole rock is almost kept fully saturated, which helps us get in-depth understanding of this gas transport mechanism.