A fractional approach to wicking fluid flow in nonwoven porous fabric

作者：Zhu Fanglong^*; Feng Qianqian; Liu Rangtong; Li Kejing; Zhou Yu

来源：International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat and Fluid Flow, 2015, 25(1): 121-128.

DOI：10.1108/HFF-04-2013-0124

• Wicking permeability
• Fractional
• Mass transfer
• Nonwoven porous media

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to employ a fractional approach to predict the permeability of nonwoven fabrics by simulating diffusion process.
Design/methodology/approach - The method described here follows a similar approach to anomalous diffusion process. The relationship between viscous hydraulic permeability and electrical conductivity of porous material is applied in the derivation of fractional power law of permeability.
Findings - The presented power law predicted by fractional method is validated by the results obtained from simulation of fluid flow around a 3D nonwoven porous material by using the lattice-Boltzmann approach. A relation between the fluid permeability and the fluid content (filling fraction), namely, following the power law of the form, was derived via a scaling argument. The exponent n is predominantly a function of pore-size distribution dimension and random walk dimension of the fluid.
Originality/value - The fractional scheme by simulating diffusion process presented in this paper is a new method to predict wicking fluid flow through nonwoven fabrics. The forecast approach can be applied to the prediction of the permeability of other porous materials.

• 出版日期2015
• 单位中原工学院