NG010-02
Evaluation of Fracture in Cement-Clay Systems through Application of Non-Local Peridynamics

Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 08:34
Virtual
Jeremy Trageser, Sandia National Laboratories, Computational Multiscale Department, Albuquerque, NM, United States, Chven A Mitchell, Purdue University, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary sciences, West Lafayette, IN, United States, Laura J Pyrak-Nolte, Purdue University, Department of Physics and Astronomy; Department of Earth, Atomospheric and Planetary Sciences; Lyles School of Civil Engineering, West Lafayette, IN, United States and Jessica M Rimsza, Sandia National Laboratories, Geochemistry Department, Albuquerque, NM, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Subsurface disposal and storage in clay-rich subsurface rocks and minerals requires an understanding of the unique fracture properties of these multiphase materials. The unique swelling and drying features of the different constituents generates unique fracture patterns, that can be modeled based on the strength and shrinkage of the cement and clay constituents. Here, we use a recently developed formulation of continuum mechanics, peridynamics, for investigation of fracture initiation and propagation as a function of variable shrinkage in cement-clay composites. Peridynamics uses integrals rather than differential operators to allow for simulation of intersecting and branching fractures that are more likely to occur in natural composite materials. Multiple composite models were developed with both distributed clay and localized clay inclusions and modeled with variable shrinkage rates to analyze the impact on the resulting fracture patterns. The modeling results indicate that the distribution of clay in the cement, including the relative difference in shrinkage rates and the size of the clay inclusions controls the resulting fracture and strength of the material, which is then compared to experimental results on comparable systems. Our results confirm that peridynamics can be used as a non-local modeling method for evaluation of the impact of variation in mineral shrinkage rates on the properties of cement-clay composites and highlights the most critical material properties in controlling fracture.

Acknowledgment: Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-NA-0003525. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. DOE or the United States Government. The experimental data is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Geosciences Research Program under Award Number (DE-FG02-09ER16022). SAND2020-7645A

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