Defining moisture swelling

The Edit material dialog box allows you to define the saturation-driven volumetric swelling of the solid skeleton of a porous medium in partially saturated flow conditions. You can use this type of material definition in the analysis of coupled wetting liquid flow and porous medium stress. See the following sections for more information:

  1. From the menu bar in the Edit Material dialog box, select OtherPore FluidMoisture Swelling.

    (For information on displaying the Edit Material dialog box, see Creating or editing a material.)

  2. Enter the following data in the Data table:

    Strain

    Volumetric moisture swelling strain, εm⁢s.

    Saturation

    Saturation, s. This value must lie in the range 0.0≤s≤1.0.

    For detailed information on how to enter data, see Entering tabular data.

  3. If you want to define anisotropic swelling, select Ratios from the Suboptions menu. See Defining anisotropic swelling” for detailed instructions.
  4. Click OK to close the Edit Material dialog box. Alternatively, you can select another material behavior to define from the menus in the Edit Material dialog box (see Browsing and modifying material behaviors, for more information).