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Title: Transport in mazes; simple geometric representations to guide the design of engineered systems
Although engineers can control the internal geometry of materials down to the micro-scale, it is unclear what configuration is ideal for a given transport process. We explore the use of mazes as abstract representations of two-phase systems. Mazes can be easily generated using many different algorithms and then represented as graphs for analysis. The three, dimensionless graph parameters of effective tortuous resistance, average tortuosity, and minimum-cut-size were derived and then correlated to the maze’s effective transport property (e.g., permeability), average residence time, and robustness, respectively. It was shown that by tuning the settings of the maze algorithm, one can obtain desired maze performance. Finally, a composite maze was constructed and shown to mimic the geometry and permeability of a real commercial membrane. In principle, a surrogate maze geometry can be optimized/tuned for a given transport process and then used to guide the rational design of the engineered system it represents.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1603318
PAR ID:
10337418
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Chemical engineering science
Volume:
250
ISSN:
0009-2509
Page Range / eLocation ID:
117416
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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