ABSTRACT
In the salt concept for the disposal of high level radioactive waste in deep geological rock formations granular salt is the favorite for backfilling of remaining openings because of its advantageous physical properties. However, its initial sealing capacity is low due to the high porosity. Besides others, the usage of pre-compacted blocks of crushed salt offers an alternative sealing concept. Our investigations are aiming to investigate both the mechanical compaction behavior and the evolution of transport properties in salt bricks (artificial pressed granular salt with a porosity of ~8%), as a prerequisite to develop mechanism-based constitutive models describing these processes in the low porosity region (10–1%). A key factor is the role of water, since it affects in a complex manner the coupled hydraulical/mechanical properties of granular salt.
