Discrete Salt Crystallization at the Surface of a Porous Medium

Stéphanie Veran-Tissoires (1) , Manuel Marcoux (1) , Marc Prat (1)

1 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse

Efflorescence refers to crystallized salt structures that form at the surface of a porous medium. The challenge is to understand why these structures do not form everywhere at the surface of the porous medium but at some specific locations and why there exists an exclusion distance around an efflorescence where no new efflorescence forms. These are explained from a visualization experiment, pore-network simulations and a simple efflorescence growth model.

Mots clés: Crystallization; Efflorescence; Porous medium

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Stéphanie Veran-Tissoires, Manuel Marcoux, Marc Prat. Discrete Salt Crystallization at the Surface of a Porous Medium. Physical Review Letters, 2012, vol. 108, 054502-p1-p4. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.054502⟩. ⟨hal-00840892⟩