Hannelore Derluyn started her academic career as a research assistant at KU Leuven (Belgium), and obtained her PhD in 2012 at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) on the topic of salt transport and crystallization in porous media, combining poromechanical modeling with neutron and X-ray imaging experiments. For her PhD thesis, she received the ETH Silver Medal.

In 2013, she became a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University (Belgium), where she specialized in dynamic X-ray microtomography. In 2016, she was then appointed as a CNRS researcher and joined the research group Mechanics and Physics of Porous Media at the Laboratory of Complex Fluids and their Reservoirs of the University of Pau & Pays de l’Adour (France).

Hannelore Derluyn conducts research on the dynamics of salt weathering cycles and associated damage propagation in porous materials, with applications in the field of sustainability of building materials, protection of cultural heritage, as well as rock weathering and underground gas storage. Her experimental work is done at the Centre for X-ray Imaging in Pau. In 2020, she received the CNRS Bronze Medal for her research.

Currently, she is leading the ERC Starting Grant project PRD-Trigger (2020-2026): Precipitation triggered rock dynamics – the missing mesoscopic link. Professor Derluyn will combine her chair at the UvA with her position as CNRS researcher.

Chair Structure and Dynamics of Porous Media

All physical objects are bounded by surfaces. In general, surface properties are subdominant for the physics of systems, since the surface contribution scales as the system size squared, whereas the bulk properties scale with the volume, i.e., the cube of the system size. For macroscopic systems, surface properties are therefore often neglected. However, a plethora of scientifically interesting and societally important phenomena emerge when the surface-to-volume ratio becomes large, as is the case in porous media; pertinent examples are oil recovery from rocks, the hygrothermal properties of concrete, and crystallization damage in stones. In the last years, we have witnessed a revolution in the microscopic understanding of porous systems, due to the advent of very powerful 3d tomography techniques that allow imaging the porous structure at small scales. These techniques offer both a highly flexible and very powerful toolbox with which the structure and the dynamics e.g. of fluid transport can be studied in a wide variety of porous systems.

Professor Derluyn’s research will focus on deepening this expertise, in collaboration with colleagues from the Soft Matter Group of the Institute of Physics, in order to better understand structural changes and dynamic processes in porous media. She will also establish collaborations with the NICAS initiative (Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science) to specifically investigate damage mechanisms in artworks, which are often constructed from porous materials, and potential remediation techniques. Finally, Professor Derluyn will engage in knowledge transfer through teaching activities and outreach activities to the general public.