Development of Darcy Flow Model in Porous Media

This work is a synthesis of some published papers of the author. It is about the development of mathematical models to describe the drying of shrinking porous media. The specificity of this book is the presentation of the Darcy-flow model used to describe the moisture transport in porous media. This model avoids the use of a phenomenological law such as the diffusion model, and it demonstrated that the pressure gradients are the driving force for the water migration in porous media. Saturated and unsaturated cases are developed and studied. Elasticity and viscoelasticity are also evoked and the results of the two mechanical behaviour are compared. The study is validated by experiments on natural clay as a model material. The book consists of three chapters that focus on the natural clay drying modelling at the microscopic scale. These chapters cover convective drying of clay material, heat and mass balances, mechanical behaviour of the material, shrinkage, strain and stress, saturation, and some physical properties of the material.