Title: Permeability of fractal porous materials composed of different combinations of capillary tubes

Authors: Antonio F. Miguel

Addresses: Department of Physics, University of Evora, Rua Romão Ramalho 59, 7000-671 Evora, Portugal; Institute of Earth Sciences (ICT), Pole of Evora, Evora, Portugal

Abstract: Non-Newtonian fluid flows in porous materials are important in many industrial engineering and bio-engineering applications. Emerging fields have led to personalised design of porous structures used, e.g., in biomaterials. Here, prefractal porous material to transport power-law fluids is studied. Materials formed by bundles of capillary tubes and dendritic networks of tubes are considered. As a result, approaches to quantity the permeability are presented in terms of void fraction of the material, maximum capillary diameter and fractal dimensions. Our approaches enable a better understanding of flow characteristics in these materials, and their consequences for designers of engineering applications such as for microfluidic devices.

Keywords: prefractal porous materials; non-Newtonian fluid; flow resistance; permeability; bundle of tubes; dendritic network.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHM.2020.107783

International Journal of Hydromechatronics, 2020 Vol.3 No.2, pp.199 - 212

Received: 03 Dec 2019
Accepted: 10 Jan 2020

Published online: 17 Jun 2020 *

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