A general correlation for the hydraulic permeability of arrays of elliptical fiber bundles

摘要

A computational analysis of viscous flow through arrays of fiber bundles is carried out using the Boundary Element Method. We consider fiber bundles of elliptical cross section, each made up of up to 350 individual filaments. Such arrays are dual-porosity systems, characterized by different inter- (PHI_i) and intra-tow (PHI_t) porosities as well as by varying number (N_f) of filaments within each bundle. Investigating the influence of these parameters on the hydraulic permeability of hexagonal arrays of such bundles is the subject of our simulations. The results are compared to earlier analytical models and a good agreement is found. A dimensionless correlation is proposed and the computed permeabilities for bundles of aspect ratio lambda=2 and lambda=3 are shown to fall on a single master curve. This offers a generalized model for the calculation of the permeability of such dual porosity systems from knowledge of PHI_i, PHI_t, lambda and N_f.