ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1601568
This article is part of the Research TopicThermo-hydro-chemo-mechanical applications using the fem software code_bright: a reviewView all 4 articles
Modelling reactive transport in unsaturated concrete under evaporation and condensation processes
Provisionally accepted
- 1CSD Engineers, Fribourg, Switzerland
- 2Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
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El Cabril is the low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Spain. Water is collected from the drains situated in the concrete cells storing radioactive waste, indicating flow of water into these concrete cells. 2D numerical models, together with temperature and humidity measurements, suggested that this flow of water was caused by a combination of thermo-hydraulic processes occurring in the unsaturated concrete, such as capillary rise from the groundwater, evaporation, and condensation due to temperature gradients caused by seasonal temperature fluctuations outside. The objective of this work is to study the effect of these processes on the mineralogy of the concrete. Therefore, 1D reactive transport models have been developed following the 2D thermo-hydraulic conceptual model. When minerals are controlled by fast kinetics, the model results show that the cement phases precipitate and dissolve, clearly following the yearly fluctuations of condensation and evaporation. However, when minerals are controlled by slow kinetics, the reactions are less affected by the hydraulic processes. The models suggest that precipitation-dissolution could be particularly important near the air gap in the concrete, where water condenses and evaporates more easily.
Keywords: reactive transport, multiphase ow, concrete, Retraso-Code_Bright, numerical model
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chaparro and Saaltink. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maarten W. Saaltink, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, 08034, Catalonia, Spain
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