Abstract
The permeability of intact Barre granite is determined by conducting transient hydraulic pulse tests that induce radial flow in saturated granite cylinders containing a water-filled co-axial cavity. Saturated specimens of granite are also subjected to uniform heating on the outer cylindrical surface and the permeability of the granite is measured at the termination of a heating sequence. The theoretical basis for the use of simplified analytical solutions for evaluating the decay of the pressure pulse is examined and the permeability of the granite in the pre-heating and post-heating states is inferred from the results of pulse tests. The reported investigations document one of the limited numbers of large-scale laboratory tests conducted to determine the permeability characteristics of intact granite. The results of the permeability measurements indicate the absence of any appreciable influences of micro structural alterations in the fabric of the granite due to its heating in a saturated condition, at an average temperature of 140 °Celsius.
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Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank Dr. D.E. Moore of the U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California, and an anonymous reviewer for their critical evaluation of the manuscript, and for the highly constructive comments. The work presented in this paper was supported through Research Grants awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). The authors are grateful to Mr. N. Vannelli for carrying out the experiments and to the scientists at CNSC for their valuable comments. One of the authors (APSS) would like to express his thanks to the Université Joseph Fourier for a Visiting Professorship at the Laboratoire 3S, during which time the research was completed.
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Selvadurai, A., Boulon, M. & Nguyen, T. The Permeability of an Intact Granite. Pure appl. geophys. 162, 373–407 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-004-2606-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-004-2606-2