Revisiting historic numerical analyses of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) rooms B and D in-situ experiments regarding thermal/structural response.

This report documents several numerical analyses simulating the isothermal and thermalmechanical (TM) response of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Room B and Room D insitu experiments that were conducted during the late 1980s. This work was funded by the Used Fuels Disposition (UFD) Campaign during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. Isothermal, thermalmechanical uncoupled, and thermal-mechanical coupled calculations simulating the WIPP experiments were conducted using the state-of-the-art Sandia Integrated Environment for Robust Research Algorithms (SIERRA) solid and thermal mechanics computer codes. These calculations used a high-fidelity constitutive law that mathematically describes the multimechanism deformation (MD) creep processes inherent to those found in nuclear waste repository environment. Both the WIPP Room D (isothermal) and Room B (heated) numerical models are presented in detail, and results from these numerical calculations are compared to historic numerical calculations and to experimentally measured data.