Modeling of ice formation in porous solids with regard to the description of frost damage

The freezing and thawing of liquid in porous media in connection with the question concerning the frost durability of solid materials is an important subject for discussion in civil engineering. Each construction or body which is in contact with liquid and frozen water is criticized by its resistance to the environment. The durability concerning frost attacks of a building material is affected by its porosity and the pore size distribution. The ice formation is a phenomenon of coupled heat and mass transport in freezing porous media, and is primarily caused by the expansion of ice in connection with hydraulic pressure. The volume increases due to the freezing front inside the porous solid. Taking into account the aforementioned effects in porous materials, a simplified macroscopic model within the framework of the Theory of Porous Media (TPM) for the numerical simulation of initial and boundary value problems of freezing and thawing processes of super saturated porous solids will be presented. The phase change between the ice and the liquid phase is modeled by different real densities of the phases.     

Parallel Krylov methods and the application to 3-d simulations of a triphasic porous media model in soil mechanics

We introduce a general parallel model for solving coupled nonlinear and time-dependent problems in soil mechanics, where we employ general purpose linear solvers with specially adjusted preconditioners. In particular, we present a parallel realization of the GMRES method applied to a triphasic porous media model in soil mechanics, where we compute the deformation of unsaturated soil together with the pore-fluid flow of water and air in the soil. Therefore, we propose a pointwise preconditioner coupling all unknowns at the nodal points. In two large-scale numerical experiments we finally present an extended evaluation of our parallel model for demanding configurations of the triphasic model.     

Modeling of multiphase flow with phase change in porous media – a case study

A general numerical model developed to simulate the time‐dependent changes of moisture content, temperature and pore pressures is proposed for a porous material. The model is based on a coupled heat and mass transfer mathematical formulation. The model’s validation is conducted using experimental data for concrete. The gravimetric technique is used to obtain the experimental data on moisture content in cylinders made up of fully saturated concrete exposed to drying. Further to demonstrate the applicability of the model, it is also studied the moisture migration, temperature development and thermal stresses in a concrete element exposed to fire. The obtained results indicate that during fire, several degradation phenomena are taking place at the same time. Thermal stresses developed by the temperature differential, especially when temperature‐dependent material properties are taken into the account, along with the increase of pore pressures, may contribute to structural failure.     

p‐version of the generalized FEM using mesh‐based handbooks with applications to multiscale problems

In this paper, we analyse the p‐convergence of a new version of the generalized finite element method (generalized FEM or GFEM) which employs mesh‐based handbook functions which are solutions of boundary value problems in domains extracted from vertex patches of the employed mesh and are pasted into the global approximation by the partition of unity method (PUM). We show that the p‐version of our GFEM is capable of achieving very high accuracy for multiscale problems which may be impossible to solve using the standard FEM. We analyse the effect of the main factors affecting the accuracy of the method namely: (a) The data and the buffer included in the handbook domains, and (b) The accuracy of the numerical construction of the handbook functions. We illustrate the robustness of the method by employing as model problem the Laplacian in a domain with a large number of closely spaced voids. Similar robustness can be expected for problems of heat‐conduction and elasticity set in domains with a large number of closely spaced voids, cracks, inclusions, etc. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modification of BN nanosheets and their thermal conducting properties in nanocomposite film with polysiloxane according to the orientation of BN

A facile technique was developed to modify boron nitride (BN) nanosheets with iron oxides in order to fabricate highly-oriented polysiloxane/BN nanosheet composite films and their thermal properties were evaluated according to the orientation of BN. The surfaces of the BN nanosheets were modified with iron oxide nano particles by chemical vapor deposition, and their one-dimensional arrangement with variation of BN content was controlled under a magnetic field. The homogeneous suspension of BN nanosheets and pre-polymers of polysiloxane was cast on a glass spacer, and subjected to a magnetic field before the mixture was crosslinked. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and superconducting quantum interference device measurements were employed to identify the phases and amounts of iron oxide nano particles deposited on the BN nanosheets. The results revealed that the modified BN nanosheets were aligned either horizontally or vertically to the film plane, depending on the direction of magnetic flux with high anisotropy. The transmittance and thermal conductivity of the nano composite films were improved due to the orientation of the BN nanosheets inside the polymer matrix.