Volume expansion vs cryosuction in frost-driven fracture: a look through numerical modeling
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Date
2025-06
Publication Type
Other Conference Item
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yes
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Abstract
Exposing wet solids to cold environments can cause the liquid imbued within to freeze. Far from innocuous, the presence of these internally growing ice inclusions can greatly compromise the solid’s structural integrity as it has the potential to trigger fracture. Traditionally, the volume expansion of water upon freezing has been assumed to be the leading factor causing frost-driven fracture in wet solids. This classical line of thought hypothesizes that the increased volume of ice has to be accommodated by the permeable solid’s microstructure, hence causing it to stretch and eventually rupture. However, conclusive experimental evidence shows that frost driven fracture can also occur in wet solids imbued with liquids that contract upon freezing, hence ruling out this physical process as the sole cause. Instead, another physical mechanism has recently arisen as a contender for causing frost-driven fracture: cryosuction. This concept stands for the migration of liquid water towards the ice front due to a reduction of the liquid pressure therein. As such, cryosuction can potentially play a dual role in frost-driven fracture: (i) leading to cracking by desiccation, and (ii) allowing ice to build up within the internal crevices for as long as the supply of supercooled water holds.
In this context, the present work leverages numerical models inspired by experimental evidence to weigh the contribution of these two mechanisms to the occurrence of frost-driven fracture, using hydrogels as a model for wet solids. This is done through two different approaches. Firstly, a simplified hyperelastic numerical model is used to assess the difference between the actual freezing experiments and the purely mechanical deformation required for the hydrogel to accommodate the experimentally documented ice topology, hence providing an indirect quantification of the actual cryosuction-induced hydrogel desiccation around the ice-filled crack tip. Secondly, a hygro-mechanical numerical model of the hydrogel is set up to preliminarily describe the migration of water towards the ice-filled crack as it grows in time at different speeds. As in the previous model, the crack shape is directly extracted from the experimental observations, while the liquid pressure drop at the crack lips is derived from the ice-water thermodynamic equilibrium. This model provides detailed insights into how cryosuction draws water from the bulk as the ice-filled crack grows, and it helps interpret the experimentally observed size-dependency of the desiccation-affected region near the ice-filled cracks.
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Publication status
published
External links
Book title
CFRAC 2025: The Eighth International Conference on Computational Modeling of Fracture and Failure of Materials and Structures
Journal / series
Volume
Pages / Article No.
137 - 137
Publisher
Faculty of Engineering University of Porto
Event
8th International Conference on Computational Modeling of Fracture and Failure of Materials and Structures (CFRAC 2025)
Edition / version
First edition
Methods
Software
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Date collected
Date created
Subject
Hydrogel; Freezing; Fracture
Organisational unit
09650 - Kammer, David / Kammer, David
Notes
Funding
24-2 FEL-004 - CryoCracks: Unraveling the physics of frost-driven fracture (ETHZ)