Suction and water uptake in unsaturated compacted bentonite

Suction is an important process dominating water movement in unsaturated compacted bentonite. Suction measurements were carried out to investigate the characteristics of suction in unsaturated compacted bentonite for the buffer of a HLW repository. The suction values decreased with increasing the water content at a given dry density, and it revealed higher value at the higher dry density of compacted bentonite. The suction variation with an increase of temperature was negligible for the water content up to 17%. For the dry density of 1600 kg/m³, the suction value in the vertical measurement was a little lower than that in the horizontal one due to the microstructural anisotropy of compacted bentonite. The modeling of water uptake in unsaturated compacted bentonite is allowed to predict the re-saturation for the buffer of a HLW repository. To this end, water uptake tests were conducted to compare their results with those calculated using the coupled hydro-mechanical model of a computer code ABAQUS. Both results were in reasonably good agreement with each other, which suggests that the model can be used to predict the re-saturation of the bentonitic buffer in a HLW repository.