Geochemical and Reactive Transport Modelling for Geological Disposal

In the first year of my thesis work, I implemented a model to simulate the chemical degradation of cement paste at macro scale, taking into account carbonation and calcium leaching. This model was incorporated into the Cast3M finite element code since the final objective of my work is to do a mechanical calculation on a chemically deteriorated tunnel. This model is based on many hypothesis and simplification to reduce the size of
the chemical model. As part of this training, I gained experience in simulating cement degradation from a different perspective, using geochemical model at a smaller scale. This code take into account all relevant species and solves various nonlinear equations to achieve equilibrium. This models depends on the input database, we used the CEMDATA18 during the trainning. Implementation examples on cement hydration and hardned cement paste carbonation have been carried out also an example on unidirectional reactive transport with uranium sorption. In addition, differents lectures
have been given and have broadened information on various parts of geochemical modelling and reactive trasport. After having taken this course, I have the ability to confidently discuss and justify my hypotheses and models during project presentations and my thesis defense.