Small-angle x-ray and neutron scattering are used to characterize the surface roughness and porosity of a natural rock which are described over three decades in length scales and over nine decades in scattered intensities by a surface fractal dimension D = 2.68+/-0.03. When this porous medium is exposed to a vapor of a contrast-matched water, neutron scattering reveals that surface roughness disappears at small scales, where a Porod behavior typical of smooth interfaces is observed instead. Water-sorption measurements confirm that such interface smoothing is due predominantly to the water condensing in the most strongly curved asperities rather than covering the surface with a wetting film of uniform thickness.

No abstract

A capacitive sensor-based apparatus has been settled to determine the liquid water amount and dielectric constant in consolidated porous media. This technique relies on the dielectric properties of water, air, and mineral substrate. The experimental procedure is described for successively oven-dried samples at 323 K. It allows us to determine the sample dielectric constant as a function of the sample water amount. For limestones from Caen region, an affine relationship is found at 293 K. This is then compared with other empirical soils data and with existing homogeneisation techniques applied to undeformable heterogeneous dielectrics.

No abstract