Simulation of a Bench Scale Experiment with an Empirical Creep Law. Technical Report

摘要

A priori predictions of the creep behavior of a planned bench scale experiment are presented. The experiment involves uniaxial loading of a large block of natural salt with a centrally located borehole. Primary measurements will include the borehole deformation. Sixteen material characterizations including four sets of elastic constants and four empirical creep power laws are developed from one standard deviation of the laboratory derived material properties and are used in the finite element simulation. Consideration is given to plane stress and plane strain solutions and to time-hardening and strain-hardening forms of the creep law. The results show that the deformations are relatively insensitive to variations in the elastic properties and very sensitive to the power on time in the empirical creep law. Differences in the results for the time-hardening and strain-hardening creep formations are small relative to the differences associated with varying the material parameters. (ERA citation 05:034227)