Experimental and theoretical analysis of (water) permeability variation of nonwoven textiles subjected to compression

¹ Military Equipment and Technologies Research Agency, St. Aeroportului, 16, Clinceni, Ilfov, 077025, Romania
² University Politehnica of Bucharest, Splaiul Independentei, 313, Bucharest, 060042 Romania
³ Institut Pprime, University of Poitiers, IUT d’Angouleme, 4 Avenue de Varsovie, 16000 Angouleme, France

^a Corresponding author : aurelian.fatu@univ-poitiers.fr

Received: 19 August 2016
Accepted: 9 September 2016

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental determination of permeability for unidirectional in-plane flow through a thin layer of nonwoven porous textile subjected to various rates of compression. The experiments were made on an original device that allows the variation of porous layer compression and pressure differential. The permeability was calculated assuming the validity of Darcy law and, in parallel, Darcy-Forchheimer model. The preliminary results obtained with water show that pressure gradient does not influence sensibly the resistance to flow of the material and Darcy’s law is applicable. For permeability-porosity correlation the experimental results were fitted using the well-known Kozeny-Carman equation. Also good correlation was found with other two models derived from Kozeny-Carman.