A novel fractal solution for permeability and Kozeny-Carman constant of fibrous porous media made up of solid particles and porous fibers

Abstract

This paper presents a novel fractal solution to investigate the permeability and the Kozeny-Carman (KC) constant of fibrous porous media made up of solid particles and porous fibers. The proposed model has been verified with satisfying agreements of the permeability and KC constant of fibrous porous media obtained by our model and those obtained by experimental data, analytical solution, and numerical simulation reported in literature. The results demonstrate that 1) an increase in particle diameter leads to an increase in the absolute permeability; 2) an increase in the tortuosity fractal dimension leads to an increase in the KC constant and decreases in the dimensionless permeability and absolute permeability; 3) an increase in the porosity results in increases in the dimensionless permeability and absolute permeability of the fibrous porous media; 4) increases in the fiber diameter yields an increase in the absolute permeability of fibrous porous media. The proposed fractal model explicitly relates the KC constant and the permeability to the microstructural parameters of the fibrous porous media, and consequently facilitating the understanding of the detailed physical mechanisms for fluids transport through fibrous porous media.