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It is essential to study nuclide transport with underground water in fractured rock masses in order to evaluate potential radionuclide leakage in nuclear waste disposal. A time-domain random-walk (TDRW) method was firstly implemented into a discrete element method (DEM), that is, UDEC, in this paper to address the pressing challenges of modelling the nuclide transport in fractured rock masses such as massive fractures and coupled hydromechanical effect. The implementation was then validated against analytical solutions for nuclide transport in a single fracture and a simple fracture network. After that, the proposed implementation was applied to model the nuclide transport in a complex fracture network investigated in the DECOVALEX 2011 project to analyze the effect of matrix diffusion and stress on the nuclide transport in the fractured rock masses. It was concluded that the implementation of the TDRW method into UDEC provided a valuable tool to study the nuclide transport in the fractured rock masses. Moreover, it was found that the total travel time of the nuclide particles in the fractured rock masses with the matrix diffusion and external stress modelled was much longer than that without the matrix diffusion and external stress modelled.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	random walk method, discrete element method, nuclide transport, fractured rock masses
Research Division:	Engineering
Research Group:	Civil engineering
Research Field:	Civil geotechnical engineering
Objective Division:	Construction
Objective Group:	Construction design
Objective Field:	Civil construction design
UTAS Author:	Chan, AHC (Professor Andrew Chan)
UTAS Author:	Liu, H (Associate Professor Hengyang Liu)
ID Code:	122361
Year Published:	2017
Web of Science® Times Cited:	5
Deposited By:	Engineering
Deposited On:	2017-11-11
Last Modified:	2018-06-18
Downloads:	88 View Download Statistics