Publicado 6 números por año
ISSN Imprimir: 2152-5102
ISSN En Línea: 2152-5110
Indexed in
NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF EFFECT OF FIBER PROPERTIES ON THROUGH-PLANE PERMEABILITY OF A 3D FIBROUS MEDIUM
SINOPSIS
Darcy permeability is an important parameter that characterizes creeping flow through a fibrous porous medium. It has a complex dependence on the medium's properties, such as porosity and fiber diameter, orientation (in-plane and through-plane), aspect ratio, and curvature. The present study investigates the effect of the aforementioned fiber properties on the through-plane permeability of a fibrous medium. A suite of 3D virtual fibrous structures with a wide range of geometric properties was constructed, and the flow field in the interfiber void space was obtained by solving the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. For a fixed in-plane and through-plane orientation of the fibers, the permeability was observed to increase as the fiber diameter increases (for a given porosity), and the permeability was found to decrease as the porosity decreases (for a fixed fiber diameter). The numerical results confirmed that the "square of the fiber diameter" is an appropriate normalizing parameter for permeability. For a fixed porosity, the through-plane permeability was found to be independent of the in-plane fiber orientation and increased nonlinearly with an increase in preferential orientation of fibers along the through-plane (flow direction in this study). Also, it was found that the effect of fiber aspect ratio and curvature on permeability was minimal. Finally, the numerical results were used to develop a general expression for through-plane permeability of fibrous media that is applicable for a wide range of porosities and fiber orientations.