RECONSTRUCTION OF RANDOM FIBROUS POROUS MATERIAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY ON ITS TRANSPORT PROPERTIES BY FRACTAL MONTE CARLO METHOD

Abstract

The microstructures and transport properties of fibrous porous material are significant for chemical catalysts, textile engineering, electronic devices, etc. In this paper, a fractal Monte Carlo method (FMCM) is developed to reconstruct the random microstructure of fibrous porous material based on the fractal scaling laws of fiber columns. And, the two-point correlation function of reconstructed fibrous material is calculated, which shows the effectiveness of the FMCM reconstruction. Also, the single-phase fluid flow through the reconstructed random fibrous porous material is simulated by the finite element method. The predicted permeability indicates good agreement with available empirical formulas. It has been found that the effective permeability of fibrous porous material decreases with the increase of fractal dimensions for fiber column. However, the fractal dimension of fiber column width has a greater influence on the effective permeability of fibrous porous material compared with that of fiber column length. The proposed numerical method provides an effective tool to reconstruct the irregular microstructure and understand the complex transport mechanisms of fibrous porous material.