ABSTRACT
The uniqueness of saturated porous media lies in the presence at pore scale of two quite different materials: a solid making up the porous matrix and a fluid filling the pores. The strong discontinuities of their properties require macroscopic descriptions which are not usual in other media. Here ‘macroscopic description’ is to be understood as ‘macroscopic equivalent medium’. Two classes of macroscopic description of porous saturated deformable media can be distinguished
— A classical single-phase description with a constitutive equation in which the viscosity of the liquid is taken into account (see Ref . 7 for example)
— A two-phase description with two displacement fields, one for the porous matrix and the other for the liquid, as introduced by Biot.3-5
The above studies have mostly been conducted directly at macroscopic scale using experimental or phenomenological methods. Here we have in mind passage from the pore scale to the macroscopic scale by using the homogenization process for fine periodic structures. The foundations of the method are presented by D.Caillerie elsewhere in this book where the reader will find the basis of the technique. Contrary to other homogenization processes, the absence of prerequisites at macroscopic level indicates the efficiency of the method as a source of fundamental information.
