Porous media can be viewed as a special type of two-phase composites (with one phase being the void phase or possibly vacuum) or as metamaterials (i.e. materials with microstructures that are principally similar to macroscopic architectural structures, from which they differ only by scale) [1,2]. In this contribution we investigate the effective elastic constants of isotropic and cubic porous...
PEM fuel cells are promising zero emission power sources. They are alternatives for fossil fuels in automotive industry. In a PEM fuel cell transport of the reactants is the function of bipolar plates. Afterwards, gas diffusion layer (GDL) distribute the reactants on the membrane. Thus, the gas transport to the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) is governed by convection in bipolar plates and...
The study of fluid-flow through porous materials is of high relevance in a wide variety of applications such as geothermal energy exploration and generation, CO2 sequestration and oil and gas reservoirs management. Physical experiments are not always convenient or even feasible, due to the nature of the materials. A suitable alternative is to realize Direct Numerical Simulations with micro-CT...
Capillarity driven lab-on-chips (LOC) are small cheap devices dedicated to perform diagnostics autonomously. To operate the chips, fluids flow in functionalized porous channels. Performance of the LOC however depends on the microporous fluid flow characteristics of the device. Pore-network (PN) models are a powerful tool to investigate transport phenomena at the pore scale while avoiding...
