A MULTISCALE THEORY OF SWELLING POROUS-MEDIA .1. APPLICATION TO ONE-DIMENSIONAL CONSOLIDATION

A theory is developed which describes flow in multi-scale, saturated s welling media. To upscale information, both the hybrid theory of mixtu res and the homogenization technique are employed. In particular, a mo del is formulated in which vicinal water (water adsorbed to the solid phase) is treated as a separate phase from bulk (non-vicinal) water. A new form of Darcy's law governing the flow of both vicinal and bulk w ater is derived which involves an interaction potential to account for the swelling nature of the system. The theory is applied to the class ical one-dimensional consolidation problem of Terzaghi and to verify L ow's empirical, exponential, swelling result for clay at the macroscal e.