Aging kinetics of porous media due to freezing-thawing cycles

The two-dimensional Ausloos et al. model of fluid invasion, freezing and th awing in a porous medium is elaborated upon and investigated in order to ta ke into account the pore volume redistribution and conservation during free zing. The results are qualitatively different from previous work, since the damaged pore sizes are found to be much less than the possible maximum val ue and is reached after a large number of invasion-freezing-thaw, ring cycl es; e.g. the material is "slowly damaged". The pore size distribution is th us found in better agreement with expected practical findings. The successi ve invasion percolation clusters are still found to be self-avoiding with a ging. The cluster size decreases with a power law as a function of invasion -frost-thaw iterations. The aging kinetics is also discussed through the no rmalized totally invaded pore volume.