A study of suffusion kinetics inspired from experimental data: comparison of three different approaches

Suffusion is a complex phenomenon characterized by a selective migration of the fine particles under the effect of three coupled processes: detachment, transport and possible filtration of the fine fraction. With the objective to reproduce the kinetics of the suffusion process, a new energy-based constitutive relationship, inspired from the energy-based approach, is proposed. Moreover, this energy-based relationship is compared with other constitutive relationships inspired from the shear stress-based approach and the power-based approach. Each predicted eroded mass evolution is consistently compared against experimental measurements. For each individual specimen, the shear stress-based constitutive relationship tackles well the initiation of the suffusion process but overestimates the development of the process. On the other hand, both the energy-based and the power-based constitutive relationships can reproduce reasonably well the evolution of the cumulative eroded mass. Finally, the intrinsic quality (i.e., independent of the sample size and of the loading path, at least at the laboratory scale) of all parameters is examined and advantages and drawbacks of each approach are also highlighted.