Related papers: Damage in porous media due to salt crystallization
We investigate salt crystallization in porous media that can lead to their disintegration. For sodium sulfate we show for the first time experimentally that when anhydrous crystals are wetted with water, there is very rapid growth of the…
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 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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
A remarkable variety of organisms and wet materials are able to endure temperatures far below the freezing point of bulk water. Cryo-tolerance in biology is usually attributed to "anti-freeze" proteins, and yet massive supercooling ($<…
The freezing of water is one of the major causes of mechanical damage in materials during wintertime; surprisingly this happens even in situations where water only partially saturates the material so that the ice has room to grow. Here we…
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…
Damage caused by freezing wet, porous materials is a widespread problem, but is hard to predict or control. Here, we show that polycrystallinity makes a great difference to the stress build-up process that underpins this damage. Unfrozen…
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…
The forces exerted by growing crystals on the surrounding materials play a major role in many geological processes, from diagenetic replacement to rock weathering and uplifting of rocks and soils. Although crystallization is a…
Experiments using the Surface Force Apparatus (SFA) have found anomalously long-ranged interactions between charged surfaces in concentrated salt solutions. Ion clustering have been suggested as a possible origin of this behaviour. In this…
Predictive modeling of CO2 storage sites requires a detailed understanding of physico-chemical processes and potential challenges for scale-up. Dramatic injectivity decline may occur due to salt precipitation pore clogging in high-salinity…
The phenomenon of salt creeping along a free surface remains only partially understood, particularly with respect to its dynamics. In this work, combining a theoretical model with controlled experiments, we identify three distinct kinetic…
Soil salinization is a major cause of soil degradation and hampers plant growth. For soils saturated with saline water, the evaporation of water induces accumulation of salt near the top of the soil. The remaining liquid gets an…
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…
We present a new perspective on the crystallinity of dust in protoplanetary disks. The dominant crystallization by thermal annealing happens in the very early phases of disk formation and evolution. Both the disk properties and the level of…