DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCHES ON TIME-DEPENDENT BEHAVIOR OF SALT ROCK AND LONG-TERM STABILITY OF SALT CAVITY

A modeling approach to the time-dependent behavior of salt rock is of special interest for many underground engineering such as underground storage of natural gas and crude oil, a permanent repository of CO_2 and high-level radioactive nuclear wastes. With respect to the large deformation and even loss of effective storage volume of salt cavities in long-term service, the developments in researches on time-dependent behaviors of salt rocks are reviewed in this paper, including creep experimental studies, creep constitutive relations of salt rock and long-term stability of salt cavity. It is pointed out that the combination analysis of creep constitutive relation modeling and physical mechanism of damage growth in salt rock at the micro- and meso- scales is an attractive topic in rheology of salt rock.