On the modeling and simulation of the mechanical behavior and damage of borosilicate glass under thermal loading
We study the thermomechanical behavior of vitrified waste packages by multiphysics modeling. The packages are manufactured by the cast of borosilicate glass into stainless steel canisters. The finite element method is used for the thermal computations.In the glass, the finite element analysis is also used to compute the specific volume evolution and the viscoelastic behavior, due to the structural relaxation of glass, as well as the simulation of the damage behavior. These consecutive behavior laws model theinfluence of the initial thermal response. Glass structural relaxation is computed using the TNM-KAHRmodel, which allows us to take into account fundamental phenomena of the glass transition, depending on the results of experimental and simulated thermal treatments. For the solid glass within this relaxation process, the stress may locally increase beyond critical values. The viscoelastic structure simulation is then coupled with continuum damage mechanics where stresses and stiffness are updated in mode I and mode II. We apply this simulation protocol after adopting conditions relative to the case of these manufactured bulky solidifying glass casts. The models then allow us to quantify the cracking surfaces inside the glass fromthe energy dissipated within the damagemodel.