Topical Day | Bridging experiments and continuum scale modelling of physical-chemical processes at the pore scale

The long-term behaviour of large-scale systems are often driven by processes acting at the pore-scale. The durability of constructions made with cement-based materials, e.g. engineered barriers in a radioactive waste disposal facility, depends among others on precipitation and dissolution reactions altering microstructural, transport and mechanical properties. Geochemical reactions such as sorption, complexation and solubility together with accessibility of pores determines the fate of contaminants and radionuclides in natural and engineered systems. The combination of developments in numerical algorithms, increased mechanistic understanding and increased computational power stimulates the development and application of numerical tools for coupled reactive transport processes at the pore-scale. These tools explicitly take into account the structure and heterogeneity of the pores and solid phases in a porous media.