Thermomechanics of Drying Processes

This book is interdisciplinary in character and combines the knowledge of me­ chanics and chemical engineering with the aim of presenting a more exhaustive analysis ofthe phenomena occurring in wet materials during drying. Traditionally, the subject of drying has been an almost exclusive domain of chemical engineers. The drying curricula have mostly included only the courses of heat and mass transfer or diffusion. The mechanical phenomena that accompany drying, as for example, warping or deformation of dried materials, or the drying induced stresses and fissures of the material, were ignored or considered in a rather obscure way. This book broadens the scope of drying theory, bringing into the curriculum the tools enabling the study of both heat and mass transport processes and the me­ chanical phenomena that occur in wet materials under drying. There is little available literature that brings together heat and mass transport processes and mechanical phenomena in a unified approach todrying processes.