Simulation of Radon Transport through Building Materials: Influence of the Water Content on Radon Exhalation Rate

Radon transport in porous materials is strongly influenced by the presence of water. It is also necessary to be able to numerically control the effects of this parameter. The radon concentration and radon exhalation rate have been determined by simulation in various building materials containing an increasing water content. It has been proved that the presence of water does not involve the same variations in the concentration on the surface of the medium, according to its porosity. For porous media with low porosity like concrete or granite, ( < 0.2), the radon concentration and radon exhalation rate sharply increase with water until the volumetric water content becomes higher than 30%. At this point, radon emanation plays an important role, in relation to the molecular diffusion process. For materials with medium porosities (e.g., limestone, brick, cement: 0.3 < < 0.45), the concentration was observed to increase up to a volumetric water content of about 10% and then decreased from there. In this case, the molecular diffusion has a greater effect due to a greater quantity of pores in the material. For a small water content, this parameter tends to make the radon concentration decrease at the surface of the medium. These simulations have been compared with experimental analysis and are in strong accordance with the experimental results.     

Experiments on Solute Transport in Aggregated Porous Media: Are Diffusions Within Aggregates and Hydrodynamic Dispersion Independent?

Two region models for solute transport in porous media assume that hydrodynamic dispersion in mobile water and solute diffusion within immobile water regions are independent. Experimental and theoretical results for transport through a macropore indicate that hydrodynamic dispersion and solute exchange are interdependent. Experiments were carried out to investigate this problem for a column packed with spherical porous aggregates. The effective diffusion coefficient of a tracer within the agreggates was determined from specific experiments. The dispersivity of the bed was determined from experiments carried out with a column filled with nonporous beads. We took advantage of the dependence of hydrodynamic dispersion on density ratios between the invading and displaced solutions to obtain a set of breakthrough curves corresponding to situations where the diffusion coefficient remains constant, whereas the dispersivity varies. Simulations reproduce correctly the experiments. Small discrepancies are noted that can be corrected either by increasing the dispersion coefficient or by fitting the external mass transfer coefficient. Increased dispersion coefficients probably reveal a modification of Taylor dispersion due to solute exchange. The fitted external mass transfer coefficients are close to the values obtained with classical correlations of the chemical engineering literature.     

Theoretical Analysis of Anion Exclusion and Diffusive Transport Through Platy-Clay Soils

Diffusive transport through geosynthetic clay liners and engineered compacted clay landfill liners is the primary mechanism for mass transport from well-engineered modern landfills. For this reason, accurate estimates of diffusion coefficients for clay soils are essential for the design of engineered liner systems. A long-standing theoretical problem is the role of anion exclusion on the estimation of diffusion coefficients for ionic solutes migrating through charged porous media. This paper describes the steady-state solution of a fully coupled set of transport equations modeling ion movement through a permanently charged platy-clay soil. The microscale analysis takes into account the actual diffusion coefficient for each ion species, ion-pairing (as required by electroneutrality of the solution), as well as anion exclusion and cation inclusion ,arising from the permanent charge on clay particles. To render the problem tractable, the theoretical analysis focuses on an extremely small two-dimensional unit cell in an ideal, saturated, two-phase porous medium. The analysis presented here is limited to a particular geometrical example, but this example is sufficiently general for characteristic behaviours of systems of this kind to be identified. Most importantly, new insight is gained into the mechanism of ion migration through a charged platy-clay soil. The numerical results obtained from this study show that the identification of macroscopic transport quantities such as effective diffusion coefficients and membrane potentials from diffusion cell tests using standard diffusion theory only hold for a specific system. While ion exclusion behaviours are often referred to in the literature, as far as the authors are aware there has been no previous detailed microscale analysis of their role in steady-state diffusion through a charged platy-clay soil.     

Characterizing the Gas Permeability of Natural and Synthetic Materials

The objective of this article is to propose an experimental method to compare the gas permeability of all the different materials used as gas barrier, such as compacted clay liners or geomembranes. This method is based on the falling pressure experiment, allowing the determination of a single coefficient whatever the material tested. This coefficient is the time constant τ, which is obtained by analytical solutions of the simplified equations describing the transport of gas through the material. The domain of validity is specified for porous media, thanks to a numerical solution of the complete equations system. Two applications are presented, showing the applicability of the method on compacted clay liners and on high density polyethylene geomembranes.     

Modeling the Chlorides Transport in Cementitious Materials By Periodic Homogenization

In this work, we develop a macroscopic model for diffusion–migration of ionic species in saturated porous media, based on periodic homogenization. The prior application is chloride transport in cementitious materials. The dimensional analysis of Nernst–Planck equation lets appear dimensionless numbers characterizing the ionic transfer in porous media. Using experimental data, these dimensionless numbers are linked to the perturbation parameter ${\varepsilon}$ . For a weak-imposed electrical field, or in natural diffusion, the asymptotic expansion of Nernst–Planck equation leads to a macroscopic model coupling diffusion and migration at the same order. The expression of the homogenized diffusion coefficient only involves the geometrical properties of the material microstructure. Then, parametric simulations are performed to compute the chloride diffusion coefficient through different complexity of the elementary cell to go on as close as possible to experimental diffusion coefficient of the two cement pastes tested.     

Analytical Solutions to Gas Flow Problems in Low Permeability Porous Media

In most of conventional porous media the flow of gas is basically controlled by the permeability and the contribution of gas flow due to gas diffusion is ignored. The diffusion effect may have significant impact on gas flow behavior, especially in low permeability porous media. In this study, a dual mechanism based on Darcy flow as well as diffusion is presented for the gas flow in homogeneous porous media. Then, a novel form of pseudo pressure function was defined. This study presents a set of novel analytical solutions developed for analyzing steady-state and transient gas flow through porous media including effective diffusion. The analytical solutions are obtained using the real gas pseudo pressure function that incorporates the effective diffusion. Furthermore, the conventional assumption was used for linearizing the gas flow equation. As application examples, the new analytical solutions have been used to design new laboratory and field testing method to determine the porous media parameters. The proposed laboratory analysis method is also used to analyze data from steady-state flow tests of three core plugs. Then, permeability (k) and effective diffusion coefficient (D _e) was determined; however, the new method allows one to analyze data from both transient and steady-state tests in various flow geometries.     

Rearrangement of fine particles in porous media causing reduction of permeability and formation of preferred pathways of flow: Experimental findings and a conceptual model

The rearrangement of matrix configuration due to the redistribution of clay particles was studied by introducing different suspensions into porous media. Clay (kaolinite) with low CEC (cation exchange capacity) and small flocs of high CEC clay (smectite) accumulated in regions of slow flow. In some experiments this was followed by rapid accumulation in regions of high velocity, impairing flow to a considerable degree. Clay with high CEC formed more voluminous structures which could bridge over a passage and impair the flow.In either case, whether small or large units of clay are involved, the final flow occurred mainly through open, preferred pathways. Such processes of redistribution and appearance of flow pathways may occur in subsurface porous media aquifers where forced gradients exist (e.g. in aquifers near the perforation of pumping wells and in places where large quantity of water are naturally or artificially recharged and in producing gas and oil fields).     

Numerical Calculation of Effective Diffusion in Unsaturated Porous Media by the TRT Lattice Boltzmann Method

Numerical models that solve transport of pollutants at the macroscopic scale in unsaturated porous media need the effective diffusion dependence on saturation as an input. We conducted numerical computations at the pore scale in order to obtain the effective diffusion curve as a function of saturation for an academic sphere packing porous medium and for a real porous medium where pore structure knowledge was obtained through X-ray tomography. The computations were performed using a combination of lattice Boltzmann models based on two relaxation time (TRT) scheme. The first stage of the calculations consisted in recovering the water spatial distribution into the pore structure for several fixed saturations using a phase separation TRT lattice Boltzmann model. Then, we performed diffusion computation of a non-reactive solute in the connected water structure using a diffusion TRT lattice Boltzmann model. Finally, the effective diffusion for each selected saturation value was estimated through inversion of a macroscopic classical analytical solution.     

Study on the effective diffusion coefficient of nano-magnetic fluid and the geometrical factors in tumor tissues

Based on the Fick’s First law, the effective diffusion coefficient of nano-magnetic fluid in tumor tissues is deduced by considering the tumor tissues as porous media and assuming the shapes of tumor to be circle or ellipse or a combination of them. The deduced expression of effective diffusion coefficient is generally a function of geometrical factors with no empirical constants and presents good agreements with the existed values especially in biological tissues (porosity is about 60%), with relative error less than 3%. The irregular structure can be transformed into regular structure (circle or ellipse) by using the irregular factor. The expression of the effective diffusion coefficient can be widely used in both regular and irregular structures and may provide theoretical basis for the study of transportation especially in drug delivery research.     

Diffusion in pore fractals: A review of linear response models

A major aspect of describing transport in heterogeneous media has been that of relating effective diffusivities to the topological properties of the medium. While such effective transport coefficients may be useful for mass fractals or under steady state conditions, they are not adequate under transient conditions for self-similar pore fractal media. In porous formations without scale, diffusion is anomalous with the mean-squared displacement of a particle proportional to time raised to a fractional exponent less than unity. The objective of this review is to investigate the nature of the laws of diffusion in fractal media using the framework of linear response theory of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. A Langevin/Fokker-Planck approach reveals that the particle diffusivity depends on its age defined as the time spent by the particle since its entry into the medium. An analysis via generalized hydrodynamics describes fractal diffusion with a frequency and wave number dependent diffusivity.     

Use of Column and Filter Paper Methods to Obtain Chloride Transportation Parameters on Mortar Samples

Many of the causes of the occurrence of pathologies in reinforced concrete structures are linked to the transport of different substances through the pores and fissures of the mortar cover layer and the concrete itself. This transport is influenced by environmental factors and the properties of the porous media. This paper deals with the application of geotechnical techniques to obtain chloride transportation parameters in mortar samples. The filter paper technique was used in order to obtain the water retention curves, and column tests were performed to obtain parameters such as retard (attenuation) factor, diffusion and mechanical dispersion coefficients and permeability. These techniques proved to be useful for determining the parameters needed for modeling the transport of chloride through the concrete cover layer. Furthermore, these techniques enable the different phenomena involved (matric suction, attenuation and hydrodynamic dispersion) to be treated separately, which is useful for modeling purposes.     

Thermodynamic Automaton Simulations of Fluid Flow and Diffusion in Porous Media

A thermodynamic automaton model of fluid flow in porous media is presented. The model is a nonrelativistic version of a Lorentz invariant lattice gas model constructed by Udey et al. (1998). In the previous model it was shown that the energy momentum tensor and the relativistic Boltzman equation can be rigorously derived from the collision and propagation rules. In the present paper we demonstrate that this nonrelativistic model can be used to accurately simulate well known results involving single phase flow and diffusion in porous media. The simulation results show that (1) one-phase flow simulations in porous media are consistent with Darcy's law; (2) the apparent diffusion coefficient decreases with a decrease in permeability; (3) small scale heterogeneity does not affect diffusion significantly in the cases considered.     

Numerical and experimental investigation of convective drying in unsaturated porous media with bound water

The heat and mass transfer in an unsaturated wet cylindrical porous bed packed with quartz particles was investigated theoretically for relatively low convective drying rates. Local thermodynamic equilibrium was assumed in the mathematical model describing the multi-phase flow in the unsaturated porous media using the energy and mass conservation equations to describe the heat and mass transfer during the drying. The drying model included convection and capillary transport of the free water, diffusion of bound water, and convection and diffusion of the gas. The numerical results indicated that the drying process could be divided into three periods, the temperature rise period, the constant drying rate period and the decreasing drying rate period. The numerical results agreed well with the experimental data verifying that the mathematical model can evaluate the drying performance of porous media for low drying rates. The effects of drying conditions such as the ambient temperature, the relative humidity, and the velocity of the drying air, on the drying process were evaluated by numerical solution.     

饱和-非饱和土壤中污染物运移过程的数值模拟

本文提出了一个模拟饱和 非饱和土壤中溶和污染物运移过程的数值模型．模拟的控制污染物运移的物理 化学现象包括：对流，机械逸散，分子弥散，吸附，蜕变，不动水效应．发展了一个修正的特征线Ｇａｌｅｒｋｉｎ方法以离散污染物运移过程的控制方程并导出了一个用于有限元方程求解的显式算法．数值例题结果表明所提出模型和算法的功能     

Spectral properties of some problems in mechanics of strongly inhomogeneous media

In the present paper, we derive effective dynamic equations and analyze the spectral properties of strongly inhomogeneous media such as elastic porous materials saturated by a fluid and two-fluid mixtures (suspensions).We also study the structure of the natural vibration spectrum of bounded volumes for several effective models and the convergence rate of solutions of the original boundary value problems for two-phase media to the corresponding solutions of the effective (homogenized) boundary value problems.     

孤立波与多孔介质结构物的非线性相互作用

基于精确至Ｏ（εμ＾２,μ＾４）的多孔介质无压渗流模型方程和均匀流体质波动的Ｂｏｕｓｓｉｎｅｓｑ方程,本文对孤立波与多孔介质结构物的相互作用了较系统的数值实验。控制方程采用基于有限差分方程离散,在时域上采用了预估－校正方法进行了时间积分。在求解演化方程的过程中,引入“内迭代”过程实现流体域和多孔介质交界面的连接条件。结果表明孤立波在多孔介质上的反射与在不可渗透的界面上的反射类似,形成反向的孤立波但     

Water Vapor Diffusion Through Soil as Affected by Temperature and Aggregate Size

Water vapor diffusion through the soil is an important part in the total water flux in the unsaturated zone of arid or semiarid regions and has several significant agricultural and engineering applications because soil moisture contents near the surface are relatively low. Water vapor diffusing through dry soil is absorbed for both long and short terms. Long-term absorption allows more water to enter than exit the soil, as reflected in the concentration gradient. Short-term absorption leads to an apparent reduction in the diffusion rate, as reflected in the diffusion coefficient. This investigation studied the effects of soil temperature and porosity on the isothermal diffusion of water vapor through soil. The diffusion model consisted of 25.4 cm × 8.9 cm × 20.3 cm Plexiglas box divided into two compartments by a partition holding a soil reservoir. Water vapor moved from a container suspended by a spring in one compartment, through the porous medium in the center of the model, to calcium chloride in a container suspended by a spring in the other compartment. The porous materials consisted of aggregates of varying size (2–2.8, 1–2, and 0.5–1 mm) of a Fayatte silty clay loam (a fine-silty, mixed mesic Typic Hapludalf). The flow rates of water vapor were measured at temperatures of 10, 20, 30, and 40°C. Warmer temperatures increased the rate of diffusion through dry soil while reduced the amount of water absorbed by that soil. Reducing porosity slowed the rate of diffusion and increased the amount of water absorbed. The dry soil in this study absorbed from 1/8 to 2/3 of the diffusing water. Maximum absorption rates occurred with the most compact soil samples at the highest temperature, though the maximum absorption as a percentage of the diffusing water was in the compact samples at the lowest temperature. The diffusivity equation D/D ₀ = [(S – 0.1)/0.9]² fit the D/D ₀ values obtained from these data if a coefficient of 1/3 or 1/3.5 is added to correct for the time delays caused by temporary sorption of the diffusing water vapor. The data, influenced by the interaction of water vapor and soil materials, represent a diffusion rate lower than the diffusion rate that would have resulted without this interaction. Mention of trade names, proprietary products, or specific equipment is intended for reader information only and does not constitute a guarantee or warranty by the USDA-ARS nor does it imply approval of the product named to the exclusion of other products. An erratum to this article can be found at     

考虑热渗效应的有限长圆柱热固结解

在作者已建立的饱和多孔介质耦合非线性热弹性理论基础上,考虑热渗效应,建立了饱和多孔介质耦合热弹性固结方程,并推导了有限长圆柱热固结问题的解析解,进而以温控三轴试验的试样为例进行了算例分析,同时利用COMSOL软件进行了数值模拟,并将解析结果和数值结果进行对比．结果表明：在不排水条件下,影响试样最终孔压大小的参数是：土的泊松比>弹性模量>水的体膨胀系数,渗透系数对孔压变化影响不大,考虑与不考虑水土压缩性不影响孔压的计算;相对线弹性情况,考虑非线弹性膨胀系数随温度变化时的孔压有所下降,轴向应变变化很小．