Numerical investigation of water evaporation from Fontainebleau sand in an environmental chamber
Résumé
The global warming and climate change have aroused increasing attention to the effect of intensive soil water evaporation on earth constructions. When investigating the hydro-mechanical behavior of soil during evaporation, it is of paramount importance to consider the coupled transport of heat and water in soil. In this study, four different evaporation tests of Fontainebleau sand conducted in an environmental chamber are investigated. A numerical approach combing a coupled hydro-thermal model and a soil-atmosphere interaction model is adopted, enabling the numerical estimation of soil temperature and soil water content variations. Comparison between the measurements and the simulation results shows the relevance of the proposed approach with consideration of suitable thermal and hydraulic boundary conditions and soil parameters. Further inspection on the variations of soil water content and soil temperature suggests the significant influence of water and heat flux boundary conditions at the soil-atmosphere interface. In this study, it is proposed to estimate the mode of soil temperature variations directly based on the observed actual evaporation curve. Moreover, the simulation results also reveal the necessity of accounting for the dry layer formed in sand during evaporation.