ABSTRACT
Although the progress in the development of knowledge on drying has been marked by an impressive array of papers and a number of books, including three editions of Handbook of Industrial Drying (Ed. A.S. Mujumdar),1 very little research has been devoted to the thermo-hydro-mechanical aspects of drying of capillary porous materials (wood, sol-gel coatings, ceramics, alumina gel, etc.). The deformations of these materials (e.g., shrinkage strains and warping) and the drying-induced stresses, which are responsible for crack formation, have been still marginally examined. Only relatively recently, one can observe a stronger research effort focused on the coupling of the heat and mass transfers with
the mechanical behavior of these materials during drying.2-9 This new look at the drying processes comes from the necessity for the improvement of the quality and the strength of dried products, as drying is the process that may violate both these properties, mainly because of crack formation at high drying rates, particularly when drying thick bodies.
