A test based on DECOVALEX2023 Task C for water vapour diffusion model for non-isothermal Richards flow

• ThermoRichardsMechanics/TaskCDECOVALEX2023/Decovalex-0.prj

This test is prepared exactly according to the specifications of Step 0c of Task C of the DECOVALEX 2023 project, which is aimed to simulate the coupled THM processes in the full-scale emplacement experiment (FE experiment) at the Mont Terri Underground Rock Laboratory [1].

The description of the Step 0c can be found in the task specifications.

Running the entire test takes long time (three hours on a PC with i7-8565U CPU). As a test for code, it is limited to run only 20 steps.

The test is used to mainly verify the implementation of water vapour diffusion model, heat latency model, and equation wise residuum compensation with non equilibrium initial state, and etc.

The results obtained are comparable with that obtained by other teams in Task C. The following figure shows the distribution of temperature in the domain, water saturation in the vicinity of the heater, and displacement magnitude in the domain after nearly 3 years’ heating:

The following two figures show the temporal variations of temperature and water saturation, respectively, at a node near the heater:

As shown the water saturation variation curve, the de-saturation - re-saturation process is well captured by the numerical simulation.

References

[1] Müller, H.R., Garitte, B., Vogt, T. et al. Implementation of the full-scale emplacement (FE) experiment at the Mont Terri rock laboratory. Swiss J Geosci 110, 287–306 (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s00015-016-0251-2