The Effect of Tomography Imaging Artefacts on Structural Analysis and Numerical Permeability Simulations

Fluid flow phenomena in porous materials can be found in many important processes in nature and in society. In particular, fluid flow through a porous medium contribute to several technological problems, e.g. extraction of oil or gas from porous rocks, spreading of contaminants in fluid-saturated soils and certain separation processes, such as filtration (Torquato, 2001). In paper and wood industry single and multi phase fluid flow properties in porous media play important roles related to manufacturing process and product development. The general laws describing creeping fluid flows are well known. However, a detailed study of fluid flow in porous heterogeneous media is complicated. This i…

Analysis of fluid flow through porous media based on x-ray micro-tomographic reconstructions

This thesis deals with creeping fluid flow through fibrous porous materials. Permeability through a porous medium is a measure of the ability of the material to transmit fluids. For testing and demonstration purposes the permeability values of a few fibrous heterogeneous materials, namely synthetic non-woven felt, wet pressing felt, cardboard, newsprint and hardwood paper, were measured experimentally. Reconstructions of the same materials under similar compression states were captured by x-ray micro-tomography. The actual microscopic pore structure thus obtained was utilised in the numerical lattice-Boltzmann analysis for solving the fluid flow permeability of the materials. Agreement betw…

Dielectric properties and partial discharge endurance of polypropylene-silica nanocomposite

This paper presents the results of the dielectric properties and partial discharge endurance measurements conducted on polypropylene (PP)-silica nanocomposite. The material compounds were analyzed with micro-Raman spectroscopy, X-ray tomography and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). ac and dc breakdown strength of the materials was measured. Dielectric response, capacitance and loss factor of the film samples were measured as a function of temperature and frequency. Partial discharge (PD) endurance of the reference PP and PP Silica nanocomposite was studied as a function of ac voltage. Material surfaces were analyzed after PD stress with optical microscopy. All dielectric measurements …

Transport properties of heterogeneous materials. Combining computerised X-ray micro-tomography and direct numerical simulations

Feasibility of a method for finding flow permeability of porous materials, based on combining computerised X-ray micro-tomography and numerical simulations, is assessed. The permeability is found by solving fluid flow through the complex 3D pore structures obtained by tomography for actual material samples. We estimate overall accuracy of the method and compare numerical and experimental results. Factors contributing to uncertainty of the method include numerical error arising from the finite resolution of tomographic images and the rather small sample size available with the present tomographic techniques. The total uncertainty of computed values of permeability is, however, not essentiall…

A method for measuring Darcian flow permeability of thin compressed fibre mats