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Influence of Overburden Rock Characteristics on Stress Arching and Surface Subsidence Over Salt Caverns

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Abstract

The urgency for energy transition from non-renewable to renewable sources has highlighted the importance of salt caverns for storing gases and disposing of nuclear wastes. While salt caverns are valuable for storage due to their low permeability and self-healing features, they present challenges, notably creep deformations in cavern walls leading to surface subsidence. Research in this field has predominantly focused on precisely determining the creep properties of rock salt through advanced laboratory tests and develo** sophisticated constitutive models to simulate salt rock behavior numerically. However, the properties of the overburden rocks are often overlooked, with their numerical modeling typically relying on simpler constitutive models, such as the isotropic linear-elastic model, or being represented merely as a uniform surcharge equivalent to the weight of the overburden rock at the top of the rock salt deposit. Nonetheless, the arching of stresses above salt cavern fields is heavily influenced by the properties of the overburden rocks, indicating that these properties are probably influential on the geomechanical behavior of salt cavern fields. To date, research on the influence of overburden rock properties on the geomechanical behavior of salt cavern fields remains unexplored. This technical note aims to shed light on this issue by examining the impact of overburden rock properties on stress redistribution and surface subsidence above a hypothetical cavern field. A 3D Finite Element Method model simulating the creep process for a field of 36 caverns within a rock salt deposit was developed. The findings reveal that the stiffness of the rock mass significantly influences the arching of stresses above this hypothetical cavern field. The more competent the overburden rock mass, the greater the stress relief in the mining area, and the wider the unmined area receiving the redistributed stresses. Thus, the differential stresses within the rock salt deposit in the mined region are reduced as the overburden rock mass becomes stiffer and stronger. Since creep deformations heavily depend on differential stresses, the properties of the overburden rock mass significantly influenced both the rate of cavern convergence and the rate of surface subsidence of the hypothetical cavern field over time. The results presented in this technical note highlight the potentially crucial role of overburden rock properties in the geomechanical behavior of cavern fields and suggest that future research should carefully consider the behavior of overburden rocks in numerical models of cavern fields.

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Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study are contained within the manuscript. There are no external data repositories or supplementary files.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support provided by the research funding agency of the Brazilian Government, CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico), Contract 162113/2020-0: Post-Doctoral Scholarship, and CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). The authors also thank the Midas Information Technology Co. ltd for providing the license for the Midas GTS NX software utilized in this research.

Funding

The authors acknowledge the support provided by the research funding agency of the Brazilian Government, CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico), Contract 162113/2020-0: Post-Doctoral Scholarship, and CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior).

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  1. Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Osvaldo P. M. Vitali

  2. Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Engineering School of São Carlos, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, SP, 13556, Brazil

    Felipe P. M. Vitali

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Osvaldo Paiva Magalhães Vitali: conceptualization, numerical modeling, figures preparation, writing and editing. Felipe Paiva Magalhães Vitali: numerical modeling and figures preparation.

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Correspondence to Osvaldo P. M. Vitali.

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Vitali, O.P.M., Vitali, F.P.M. Influence of Overburden Rock Characteristics on Stress Arching and Surface Subsidence Over Salt Caverns. Geotech Geol Eng 42, 4245–4255 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-024-02773-w

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