Related papers: Damage due to salt crystallization in porous media
We investigate the origins of salt damage in sandstones for the two most common salts: sodium chloride and sulfate. The results show that the observed difference in damage between the two salts is directly related to the kinetics of…
The crystalline structure of minerals due to the highly ordered assembly of its constituent atoms, ions or molecules confers a considerable hardness and brittleness to the materials. As a result, they are generally subject to fracture. Here…
Evaporation from a porous medium partially saturated with saline water, causes the salinity (salt concentration) to increase near the top of the porous medium as water leaves while salt stays behind. As the density of the water increases…
We study the response of materials with nanoscale pores containing sodium chloride solutions, to cycles of relative humidity (RH). Compared to pure fluids, we show that these sorption isotherms display much wider hysteresis, with a shape…
Salt crystallization is a major cause of weathering of artworks, monuments and rocks. Damage will occur if crystals continue to grow in confinement, i.e. within the pore space of these materials generating mechanical stresses. We report on…
The stress generation on pore walls due to the growth of a sodium chloride crystal in a confined aqueous solution is studied from evaporation experiments in microfluidic channels in conjunction with numerical computations of crystal growth.…
We study the spontaneous nucleation and growth of sodium chloride crystals induced by controlled evaporation in confined geometries (microcapillaries) spanning several orders of magnitude in volume. In all experiments, the nucleation…
The nature of glass phases of liquid crystals in random porous media depends on the effective disorder strength. We study how the disorder strength depends on the density of the porous media and demonstrate that it can increase as the…
Spherulites are complex polycrystalline structures that form through the self-assembly of small aggregated nanocrystals starting from a central point and growing radially outward. Despite their wide prevalence and relevance to fields…
The self-amplifying creeping of salts can produce striking macroscopic structures, such as desert roses in arid regions and salt pillars near saline lakes. While these formations are visually remarkable, salt crystallization, often seen as…
The presence of liquid water in frozen media impacts the strength of soils, the growth of frost heave, plant life and microbial activities, or the durability of infrastructures in cold regions. If the effect of confinement on freezing is…
It will be shown that for a solution of salt dissolved in water in contact with a metallic wall, the concentration of salt ions (both positive and negative) within a few Angstroms of the wall can be large enough to exceed the solubility…
In this paper we propose a new mathematical model describing the effect of phosphocitrate (PC) on sodium sulphate crystallization inside bricks. This model describes salt and water transport, and crystal formation in a one dimensional…
We report a study of the structure of droplets of colloidal gels containing dissolved sodium chloride. The components segregate and form intricate patterns. The salt crystalizes in fractal and multi-fractal dendritic forms which are…
Life on Earth depends upon the dissolution of ionic salts in water, particularly NaCl. However, an atomistic scale understanding of the process remains elusive. Simulations lend themselves conveniently to studying dissolution since they…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
Many ionic surfactants, such as sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) crystallize out of solution if the temperature falls below the crystallization boundary. The crystallization temperature is impacted by solution properties, and can be decreased…
Amorphous and glassy materials are important for many advanced applications, from flexible solar cells to drug delivery systems. To this end, new glasses are in high demand, but precise chemical design of amorphous materials remains…
We experimentally demonstrate the formation of salt aggregations with unexpectedly high concentration inside multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) soaked only in dilute salt solutions and even in solutions containing only traces of salts.…
The generation of stress in a pore due to salt crystallization is generally analysed as a compressive stress generation mechanism using the concept of crystallization pressure. We report on a completely different stress generation…