Spatial dispersion and energy in strong chiral medium

Since the discovery of backward-wave materials, people have tried to realize strong chiral medium, which is traditionally thought impossible mainly for the reason of energy and spatial dispersion. We compare the two most popular descriptions of chiral medium. After analyzing several possible reasons for the traditional restriction, we show that strong chirality parameter leads to positive energy without any frequency-band limitation in the weak spatial dispersion. Moreover, strong chirality does not result in a strong spatial dispersion, which occurs only around the traditional limit point. For strong spatial dispersion where higher-order terms of spatial dispersion need to be considered, the energy conversation is also valid. Finally, we show that strong chirality need to be realized from the conjugated type of spatial dispersion.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Modelling the thermo-mechanical volume change behaviour of compacted expansive clays

Compacted expansive clays are often considered as a possible buffer material in high-level deep radioactive waste disposals. After the installation of waste canisters, the engineered clay barriers are subjected to thermo-hydro-mechanical actions in the form of water infiltration from the geological barrier, heat dissipation from the radioactive waste canisters, and stresses generated by clay swelling under almost confined conditions. The aim of the present work is to develop a constitutive model that is able to describe the behaviour of compacted expansive clays under these coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical actions. The proposed model is based on two existing models: one for the hydro-mechanical behaviour of compacted expansive clays and another for the thermo-mechanical behaviour of saturated clays. The elaborated model has been validated using the thermo-hydro-mechanical test results on the compacted MX80 bentonite. Comparison between the model prediction and the experimental data show that this model is able to reproduce the main features of volume changes: heating at constant suction and pressure induces either expansion or contraction; the mean yield stress changes with variations of suction or temperature