Laboratory hydro-mechanical characterisation of Boom Clay at Essen and Mol

Abstract

Boom Clay has been selected as a potential host rock formation for the geological disposal of radioactive waste in Belgium. In the present work, the hydro-mechanical behaviour of Boom Clay samples from the borehole Essen-1 at a depth of 220–260 m and from HADES that is the underground rock laboratory at Mol in Belgium, at 223-m depth was investigated in the laboratory by performing low pressure oedometer tests (vertical effective stress ranging from 0.05 to 3.2 MPa), high pressure oedometer tests (vertical effective stress ranging from 0.125 to 32 MPa), isotropic consolidation tests (confining effective stress ranging from the in situ stress to 20 MPa) and triaxial shear tests. It has been observed that the mineralogy, geotechnical properties and hydro-mechanical behaviour of Boom Clay from Essen at 227-m, 240-m and 248-m depths are similar to that of Boom Clay from Mol. As in the case of Boom Clay at Mol, the failure envelope of Boom Clay at Essen in the p′– q plane is not linear. The slope of the portion beyond the pre-consolidation stress of Boom Clay from Essen is almost the same as that from Mol, suggesting a similar internal friction angle of about 13°. The compression curves (void index I v versus logarithm of vertical stress) beyond the pre-consolidation stress are the same for both samples from Mol and Essen, and situated between the intrinsic compression line (ICL) and the sedimentation compression line (SCL). The yield stress determined from oedometer tests seems to be stress-path dependent and lower than the pre-consolidation stress. Thus determining the over-consolidation ratio (OCR) using the yield stress value would lead to an incorrect estimate. From a practical point view, the laboratory test results from Essen and their comparison with those from Mol provide important information regarding the transferability of knowledge on Boom Clay at different sites, taking into account the fact that most investigations have been carried out on Boom Clay at Mol.