| Project Detail |
Fibrous media are ubiquitous in natural and engineered systems, due to their versatility, flexibility and functionality. Nonwovens (i.e. entangled fibrous networks), and especially natural fibre -based materials such as paper or flax mats, are heavily used for a variety of applications, and could be largely developed as a sustainable alternative for plastics. The first limitation of their widespread use is their response to humidity, wetting or drying, which is unavoidable in many applications, and is a key step of their manufacturing processes. The ElCapiTex project aims at characterizing and modelling the specific behaviour and properties of wet non-woven textiles (consolidation, imbibition, mechanical response, deformation) and of their manufacturing processes. In order to characterize the complex interplay between the various physical mechanisms that gives rise to the global properties of textiles (hydrodynamics, capillarity, elasticity, swelling), we will combine different approaches coming from three recent active research areas of fluid-structure interactions: the transport of suspensions of elastic objects, elastocapillarity (i.e. the deformation induced by the capillary forces associated with liquid-air interfaces), and poroelasticity. We will work with a hierarchy of experimental model systems of increasing complexity, in particular by fabricating model nonwoven sheets from gel fibre suspensions. We will further build theoretical models, based on recent statistical approaches used to describe the mechanical properties of dry textiles. Understanding these physical mechanisms is mandatory to develop innovative processes and materials; reconciling fundamental pore-scale mechanisms with network behaviour will allow for the design of tailored fibrous media with specific properties. |
