SUMMARY

Porous media are used widely in various industries such as biomedical engineering, apparels fabrication, and alternative energy. The performance of systems using porous fibrous structures is dependent on the porous media’s transport and mechanical properties. It has been shown that these properties depend on the pore structure of the fibrous media. Thus, the ability to manufacture a porous media with an engineered structure and predict its properties is highly desirable for the optimization of the overall performance of relevant systems. To date, the characterization of the porous media has been primarily based on reverse design methods i.e., extracting the data from existing materials with image processing techniques. The main motivation of the current research is to virtually generate the fibrous porous structures, predict their morphological and transport properties prior to manufacturing stage and model the manufacturing process of composite functional porous materials. Due to the broad application of the coated porous media in various industries, such as paper and textiles, the porous coating manufacturing procedure is the focus of the current study. Using this frame work a modified periodic surface (PS) model is developed. Using the modified PS model the fibrous porous media is generated parametrically with the detailed information of fiber profile, matrix properties and fiber-binder composition. The transport properties of the generated microstructures such as permeability, diffusivity and tortuosity, are found via numerical analysis. For further characterization of the constructed porous media a morphological analysis package has been developed to find the pore size, chord length and shortest path length distributions inside the porous domain. Conducting these analyses the interplay between the microstructure and transport characteristics of the porous media can be quickly identified. The suggested design methodology is extended to simulate direct coating of the structures. The mechanism of fluid penetration into the porous media during the slot die coating process is investigated numerically at the micro scale, and the impacts of the operating conditions and the microstructural properties of the fibrous media are studied. The outcome of the current study will have impact in the field of material engineering, giving engineers an effective tool in the virtual space for optimal design and manufacture of porous media.