Constitutive modeling Description of damage reduction and healing with the CDM constitutive model for the thermo-mechanical behavior of rock salt

The term “composite” refers to the subgrain microstructure that is found in natural rock salt and consists of a heterogeneous dislocation distribution within the grains (Carter et al. 1982, Vogler 1992, Weidinger 1998, Hampel & Hunsche 2002). It is considered to be composed of mechanically “soft” subgrain interiors and “hard” subgrain boundaries that have a major influence on the local stress distribution and, therefore, on the dislocation motion through the subgrains on the microscale (Vogler 1992, Weidinger 1998) and thus on the transient and steady-state creep behavior on the macroscale.