ABSTRACT
Swelling clays are found in various parts of the world and are responsible for damage to infrastructure and light structures that amount to billions of dollars each year. These clays also have beneficial uses in environmental engineering as clay liners, in petroleum industry as drilling mud, in industry as nano-inclusions in nanocomposites and in pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Molecular modeling studies were conducted to calculate interaction energies that describe the mechanism of swelling and their role on maintaining the stability of clay structure. Experimental studies were conducted with clay intercalated with fluids exhibiting a range of polarities from highly polar to non polar. The multiscale approach and results described in this paper open a new methodology to connect molecular scale phenomenon to macros-cale properties of clays and would lead to powerful new tools for accurately predicting behavior of clays.
