Erosion Of Buffer Caused By Groundwater Leakages Based On ESM-Application

O. Punkkinen[1], A. Jorma[1], K. Kari[2], and M. Olin[3]
[1]B+Tech, Helsinki, Finland
[2]Posiva, Eurajoki, Finland
[3]VTT, Espoo, Finland
Published in 2010

In this work the issue of saturation phase erosion caused by groundwater leakages was approached both experimentally and computationally by employing COMSOL\'s Earth Science Module. We evaluated the total mass of eroded bentonite out of a cylindrical erosion channel both numerically and experimentally, and studied its dependence on time. It was observed that logarithmic eroded mass loss as a function of logarithmic time increases linearly in the active part of the erosion process, i.e. between the initial transient regime of high swelling vs. erosion behaviour and before the final decay towards stable channel.