Technical Papers and Presentations

The hydro-mechanical (HM) numerical simulation of a shaft seal installed at a fracture zone in a hypothetical host rock using COMSOL is presented. Two different stages are considered in the numerical modelling. Stage 1 simulates the groundwater flow into an open shaft. Stage 2 simulates the groundwater flow after installation of shaft sealing-components. The shaft sealing components include: bentonite-sand buffer mixture (BSM), dense backfill (DBF) and concrete (CS).

This paper presents the numerical formulation that was successful in simulating HM behaviour of an unsaturated triaxial specimen in a laboratory. This formulation was then used to simulate the HM behaviour of a shaft seal at Stages 1 and 2. The durations of Stages 1 and 2 were 100 years and 1,000,000 years, respectively.