Permeability of fractal porous materials composed of different combinations of capillary tubes

Abstract

Non-Newtonian fluid flows in porous materials are important in many industrial engineering and bio-engineering applications. Emerging fields have led to personalised design of porous structures used, e.g., in biomaterials. Here, prefractal porous material to transport power-law fluids is studied. Materials formed by bundles of capillary tubes and dendritic networks of tubes are considered. As a result, approaches to quantity the permeability are presented in terms of void fraction of the material, maximum capillary diameter and fractal dimensions. Our approaches enable a better understanding of flow characteristics in these materials, and their consequences for designers of engineering applications such as for microfluidic devices.