Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to mathematically describe and experimentally determine the self-fracturing of fluid-saturated porous materials during drying processes. The thermo-hydro-mechanical model of drying that is suitable for a mathematical description of these phenomena as well as the acoustic emission (AE) technique for their experimental detection are presented. Numerical solutions based on the thermo-hydro-mechanical drying model are used to analyze stress development and to formulate the crack criterion in dried material. The studies concern the convective drying of kaolin-clay material. Bar-shaped samples with a rectangular cross-section were used for the mechanical tests and cylindrically shaped samples of kaolin-clay were used for the drying tests. Good agreement of the theoretical predictions to the experimental data is shown.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was carried out as part of the research project N N209 104337 sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.