In-plane permeability measurements: a nordic round-robin study

Abstract

Three methods to measure the in-plane permeability are compared. The methods are based on the wetting and saturated parallel flow techniques and the wetting radial flow technique. It is found that the stability of all three methods is very good. The best repeatability in the results is obtained with the wetting parallel flow technique. A main drawback of this method is, however, that the samples are not saturated hence, the saturated parallel flow method is suggested for continued evaluation. The standard deviation from repeatable measurements of this method is 14 and 20% for the two fabrics tested. By a round-robin comparison at three laboratories it is found that the reproducibility of the saturated parallel flow technique is in the same range as the repeatability of the method. Furthermore, it is shown that the liquid tested and the pressure applied have very small influence on the results. It is clear that most of the scatter is due to the sample preparation and variations in the material. Accordingly, a continued work should be concentrated on improvements of the sample preparation, and development of methods to reduce the influence, from small errors, in sample preparation on the results.