Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Materials Science and Engineering
Database of Generated Rock Microstructures and their computed Geometrical and Hydraulic properties
Published: 2025-10-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering
There is a strong link between a material’s microstructural features and its macroscopic physical properties. However, heterogeneities in real-world rock microstructures often result in strong cross-correlations between the microscopic features, making it difficult to evaluate the influence of individual characteristics. Minkowski functionals (MFs), a set of measures derived from integral [...]
Minkowski Functionals as Analytical Predictors of Permeability in Porous Microstructures
Published: 2025-09-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Understanding the relationship between microstructure and macroscopic properties in porous media remains crucial for numerous applications in geoscience and engineering. For example, accurate predictability of permeability is essential for optimizing fluid flow processes in applications such as hydrocarbon recovery, groundwater management, and carbon or energy storage. The Kozeny-Carman equation [...]
Classifying Climate Benefits and Addressing Trade-offs of Timber Use in Buildings for Voluntary Carbon Markets and the EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework
Published: 2025-08-01
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Other Engineering, Planetary Sciences, Statistics and Probability
Timber use in construction is increasingly promoted as a climate mitigation option due to its potential for carbon storage and material substitution. Current classifications often conflate storage with carbon removal, risking misalignment with voluntary carbon market integrity frameworks and the EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework. This paper evaluates the scientific and methodological [...]
Experiments to Systematically Evaluate the Role of Cohesion in River Morphodynamics
Published: 2025-07-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Other Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While cohesion is thought to be an important control on sediment transport, few studies have systematically examined the role of cohesion in river morphodynamics. In this study we use simplified, small-scale laboratory experiments to investigate how increasing sediment cohesion affects the morphometrics of fluvial channels. Experiments were conducted in a laminar flume with a mixture of [...]
A simulation-based study using boundary conditions of a thermal response for common building materials in a low-income housing for Kampala, Uganda
Published: 2025-05-24
Subjects: Materials Science and Engineering
Indoor thermal comfort is still a major issue in low-income housing in tropical urban areas like Kampala, Uganda, where passive design techniques are frequently the only practical way to manage heat. A boundary-condition-based thermal simulation of popular building materials, such as concrete walls, plastered brick walls, thatch roofing, and dark and light-colored metal roofs, is shown in this [...]
Novel Nitrogen Hybrid Gas-Based Nanofoam System for Enhanced Geothermal Applications: Nanogeios and GEIOS Geothermal EQG
Published: 2025-03-03
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
This study presents a novel nitrogen hybrid gas nanofoam system designed for enhanced geothermal applications, validated through comprehensive laboratory testing. The system integrates a nitrogen gas matrix (95% by volume) infused with engineered aluminum oxide (0.6–0.8% vol) and silica (0.3–0.5% vol) nanoparticles, achieving superior thermal conductivity and fracture stability under simulated [...]
Stress-strain hysteresis during hydrostatic loading of porous rocks
Published: 2024-01-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering
A micro-mechanical model is proposed to predict the stress-strain hysteresis during the cyclic hydrostatic loading of fluid-saturated rocks under drained or undrained conditions. A spherical pore is surrounded by a cracked shell where local deviatoric stress develops despite the remote hydrostatic loading. The effective properties of the material composing the shell are constructed with the crack [...]
Comment on “If not brittle: Ductile, Plastic, or Viscous? By Kelin Wang”
Published: 2022-04-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering
In continuum mechanics, viscous materials are those that lack rigidity and elastic response under shear stress. We argue that using the term viscous to refer to the aseismic lithosphere is thus a misnomer, as it denies the propagation of S-waves through the lithosphere in total contradiction to decades of seismic surveys. Likewise, viscous materials lack yield stress, which is another feature [...]
CCC - integrated multiscale study of salt cavern abandonment in the Netherlands
Published: 2022-03-24
Subjects: Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mineral Physics, Mining Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
The KEM-17 project of the Dutch State Supervision of Mines presented a critical review of concepts of cavern abandonment and related science. It recommended that analyses of cavern abandonment are done as an integrated project, addressing (i) micro-scale physical processes, (ii) cavern scale models based on field scale experiments and numerical models, (iii) the salt dome scale, to model the far [...]
An anisotropic equation of state for high pressure, high temperature applications
Published: 2021-09-25
Subjects: Condensed Matter Physics, Geophysics and Seismology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Planetary Mineral Physics
This paper presents a strategy for consistently extending isotropic equations of state to model anisotropic materials over a wide range of pressures and temperatures under nearly hydrostatic conditions. The method can be applied to materials of arbitrary symmetry. The paper provides expressions for the deformation gradient tensor, the lattice parameters, the isothermal elastic compliance tensor [...]
Fluid invasion dynamics in porous media with complex wettability and connectivity
Published: 2021-06-18
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Complex Fluids, Earth Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Hydrology, Materials Science and Engineering, Other Materials Science and Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Transport Phenomena
Multiphase flow is important for many natural and engineered processes in subsurface geoscience. Pore-scale multiphase flow dynamics are commonly characterized by an average balance of driving forces. However, significant local variability in this balance may exist inside natural, heterogeneous porous materials, such as rocks and soils. Here, we investigate multiphase flow in heterogeneous rocks [...]
A damage model for the frictional shear failure of brittle materials in compression
Published: 2021-05-13
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Damage models have been successfully employed for many decades in the modelling of tensile failure, where the crack surfaces separate as a crack grows. The advantage of this approach is that crack trajectories can be computed simply and efficiently on a fixed finite element mesh without explicit tracking. The development of damage models for shear failure in compression, where the crack faces [...]
Linking elastic and electrical properties of rocks using cross-property DEM
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering Science and Materials, Geophysics and Seismology, Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Joint electrical-elastic rock physics modelling can be instrumental in lowering uncertainty in subsurface reservoir characterisation. Typical electrical-elastic cross-property models, however, are empirical or require an intermediate step of porosity estimation to link a rock's electrical and elastic moduli, which can be error-prone away from well controls. Another outstanding issue in [...]
Predicting the yield stress of a 3D printed porous material from its internal structure
Published: 2020-05-12
Subjects: Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Structural Materials
The design of any engineering structure requires the knowledge, and therefore determination, of the yield, i.e. limit of elasticity, for the building material. Whilst destructive experimental testing is currently necessary to do so, our work is part of initiatives which aim at deriving the yield without such laboratory experiments. The seminal work of Gurson (1977) on a simplified pore structure, [...]
A note on the instability and pattern formation of shrinkage cracks in viscoplastic soils
Published: 2019-11-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering
In this note we present a theoretical study on the conditions for the onset of cracks, as well as the corresponding pattern formation, in saturated viscoplastic soils under isotropic loading (extension). The type of stress applied is left unspecified, to cover a variety of loadings including shrinkage due to dessication, isotropic thermal expansion, mechanical loading and so forth. By treating [...]