Effect of the geometry on the description of the water absorption by composite materials using diffusion models

✍ Scribed by W. P. da Silva; C. M. D. P. S. e Silva; V. S. O. Farias; A. G. B. Lima

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 796 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0933-5137
• DOI: 10.1002/mawe.201100800

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of the geometric representation of samples of a composite material on the description of its water absorption is studied. It is supposed that diffusion models with boundary condition of the first kind satisfactorily describe the absorption, and that the volume and effective mass diffusivity are constant during the process. The geometries used to represent the samples are: infinite slab, rectangular plate and parallelepiped. The effective mass diffusivity is determined by coupling of the analytical solution corresponding to the model to an optimizer based on the inverse method. For the dimensions of the samples, based on statistical indicators obtained in the simulation of each model, it can be concluded that the best geometric representation is the parallelepiped. However, if there is no interest about the moisture distribution within the sample and the only objective of the research is to describe the water absorption kinetics, the infinite slab can also be used.