Thermomechanics of porous media - I: Thermohydraulic model for compacted bentonite

A general thermomechanical model is derived for a mixture. The model describes the behavior of the mixture via proper choices of free energy and dissipation function. A model for any combination of the mixture constituents can be reduced from the general model. The theory is applied to a thermohydraulic model for a mixture of compacted bentonite, liquid water, vapor, and air with the assumption of rigid skeleton and constant uniform porosity. The free energy of the system is chosen to take into account the individual nondissipative behaviors of the constituents and their mutual interactions, namely, adsorption and mixing of the gaseous constituents. The choices for the interaction terms are based on the equilibrium conditions for the water species in different combinations of the constituents. The resulting thermodynamically consistent macroscopic model is fitted to a suction experiment and applied to a simple one-dimensional thermohydraulic simulation of the bentonite buffer of the Febex in situ test. The results calculated with finite element method are successfully compared to measurements.