Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
We seek to address how air entrapment mechanisms during infiltration are influenced by the wetting characteristics of the fluid and the pore network formed by the reinforcement. To this end, we evaluated the behavior of two model fluids with different surface tensions, infiltrating three carbon fiber reinforcements, by means of X-ray radiography. We also assessed initial (dry) and final (wetted) states for each experiment by performing X-ray CT scans. We found that the fluid characteristics strongly affect the flow front patterns and pore filling events for a given fabric architecture. Two main promoters of snap-off events are involved in capillary dominated flows: a very wetting system leading to corner flows and the fabric bundles oriented perpendicular to the flow acting as obstacles, specifically in fabric architectures prone to variations in nesting. Finally, we evaluated the applicability of a pore network model to further link preform architecture and void formation.
Véronique Michaud, Baris Çaglar, Helena Luisa Teixido Pedarros, Guillaume Clément Broggi
Lyesse Laloui, Eleni Stavropoulou, Cesare Griner