Over the last nine years, coordinated activities in laboratory database generation, constitutive model formulation, and numerical code capability development have led to an improved ability of thermal/structural codes to predict the creep deformation of underground rooms in bedded salt deposits. In the last year, these codes have been undergoing preliminary validation against an extensive database collected from the large scale underground structural in situ tests at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Southeastern New Mexico. This validation exercise has allowed prediction capabilities to be evaluated for accuracy. We present here a summary of the predictive capability and the nature of the in situ database involved in the validation exercise. The WIPP validation exercise has proven to be especially productive. 7 refs., 4 figs., 1 tab
