An experimental study of the water transfer through confined compacted GMZ bentonite

GMZ bentonite has been considered as a possible material for engineered barrier in the Chinese program of nuclear waste disposal at great depth. In the present work, the hydraulic conductivity of this bentonite was determined by simultaneous profile method. A specific infiltration cell equipped with five resistive relative humidity probes was designed for this purpose. The water retention properties were studied under both confined and unconfined conditions; the results show that at high suctions (> 4 MPa) the water retention capacity is independent of the confining condition, and by contrast, at low suctions (< 4 MPa) the confined condition resulted in significant low water retention. Furthermore, the microstructure was investigated at mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) and Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) in different states: on oven-dried powder, bentonite slurry, as-compacted and wetted samples. It has been observed that the soil powder is constituted of aggregates of various sizes; these aggregates are destroyed by full saturation at a water content equal to the liquid limit; compaction at the initial water content of 11–12% and a dry density of 1.7–1.75 Mg/m3 led to a microstructure characterized by a dense assembly of relatively well preserved aggregates; saturation of the compacted sample under constant volume condition defined a non-homogeneous microstructure with the presence of well preserved aggregates. This non-homogeneous microstructure would be due to the non uniform distribution of the generated swelling pressure within the soil sample upon wetting. The hydraulic conductivity determined has been found decreasing first and then increasing with suction decrease from the initial value of about 80 MPa to zero; the decrease can be attributed to the large pore clogging due to soft gel creation by exfoliation process, as observed at ESEM.