The paper aims at assessing how, for a porous material whose pore size distribution
is experimentally known, the variation in pore deformation with pore size might
affect predictions of drying shrinkage. Unsaturated poroelasticity is first revisited in a
general macroscopic thermodynamic framework irrespective of any morphology of the
porous space. Saturation is shown to be a state function of capillary pressure
governing the change in the solid-fluid interface energy; it can be experimentally
obtained from a knowledge of pore size distribution only. Unsaturated poroelastic
properties are then determined under three homogenization schemes: the
standard Mori–Tanaka scheme, the self-consistent scheme, and the differential
homogenization scheme extended to unsaturated conditions. Except for the
Mori–Tanaka scheme, the function weighting the fluid pore pressure in the
poroelastic constitutive equations is found to depart from the pore volume
fraction the liquid occupies. As a result the pores do not deform uniformly.
This departure roughly accounts for the difference in deformation between
pores of different sizes and subjected to the same pressure, and it is found to
significantly affect predictions of drying shrinkage, in particular for cement
paste.