HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Abstract: Direct observations of the surface and shape of model nano-colloidal gels associated with measurements of the spatial distribution of water content during drying show that air starts to significantly penetrate the sample when the material stops shrinking. We show that whether the material fractures or not during desiccation, as air penetrates the porous body, the water saturation decreases but remains almost homogeneous throughout the sample. This airinvasion is at the origin of another type of fracture due to capillary effects; these results provide a new insight in the liquid dynamics at the nano-scale. PACS number(s): 47.56.+r, 68.03.Fg, 81.40.Np
Water transfer and crack regimes in nano-colloidal gels