Finite element modelling of thermo-elasto-plastic unsaturated porous materials with application to nuclear waste disposal

This paper presents a general framework for the computational analysis of geo-environmental engineering problems analysed as multi-physics coupled problems. To this end, the ACMEG-Ts thermo-elasto-plastic constitutive model for unsaturated soils has been implemented in the finite element code COMES-GEO. Validation of the implementation of the constitutive model is made by selected comparison between model simulation and experimental results for different combinations of thermo-hydro-mechanical loading paths. Application to the modelling of the hydro-thermo-mechanical behaviour of a deep nuclear waste disposal in a geological clay formation is also shown.