Freezing of a deformable water-saturated porous medium. Part I: THM formulation, OpenGeoSys-6 implementation and benchmarking
Abstract
In this contribution, Part I, we present a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical formulation for modeling and analyzing water-to-ice phase change in a deformable fully-saturated porous medium. It is implemented in the multi-physics computational platform OpenGeoSys-6. We compute a series of carefully designed benchmark problems which critically examine the corresponding formulation components and the overall implementation. Several ingredients that have a qualitative and quantitative impact on the numerical results are identified, particularly dissected and commented on. Simulations also account for soil deformation induced by freezing (as a result of 9% volumetric expansion caused by water-to-ice phase transition). The forthcoming Part II will complete the code verification and validation campaign by considering a real full-scale three-dimensional case study of shallow subsurface ice storage. More specifically, we simulate the ice growth process in a fully saturated soil specimen surrounding a group of borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) that contain subzero temperature coolant fluid. A snapshot of the numerical results of this task is already depicted here in Part I as a teaser.
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BibTeX
@misc{gerasimov2026freezing,
title = {{Freezing of a deformable water-saturated porous medium. Part I: THM formulation, OpenGeoSys-6 implementation and benchmarking}},
author = {Tymofiy Gerasimov and Christian B. Silbermann and Dmitri Naumov and Olaf Kolditz and Haibing Shao and Thomas Nagel},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.30591},
eprint = {2608.30591},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30591},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Freezing of a deformable water-saturated porous medium. Part I: THM formulation, OpenGeoSys-6 implementation and benchmarking
AU - Tymofiy Gerasimov
AU - Christian B. Silbermann
AU - Dmitri Naumov
AU - Olaf Kolditz
AU - Haibing Shao
AU - Thomas Nagel
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.30591
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30591
AB - In this contribution, Part I, we present a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical formulation for modeling and analyzing water-to-ice phase change in a deformable fully-saturated porous medium. It is implemented in the multi-physics computational platform OpenGeoSys-6. We compute a series of carefully designed benchmark problems which critically examine the corresponding formulation components and the overall implementation. Several ingredients that have a qualitative and quantitative impact on the numerical results are identified, particularly dissected and commented on. Simulations also account for soil deformation induced by freezing (as a result of 9% volumetric expansion caused by water-to-ice phase transition). The forthcoming Part II will complete the code verification and validation campaign by considering a real full-scale three-dimensional case study of shallow subsurface ice storage. More specifically, we simulate the ice growth process in a fully saturated soil specimen surrounding a group of borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) that contain subzero temperature coolant fluid. A snapshot of the numerical results of this task is already depicted here in Part I as a teaser.
ER -