A 3D additive manufacturing approach for the validation of a numerical wall-scale model of catalytic particulate filters

The validation of a numerical model used to predict the permeability of the microporous wall of a coated gasoline particulate filer is arduous due to multiscale effects. To circumvent this, an experimental magnified twin approach based on kinematic similarity is proposed. It consists of (1) printing magnified porous wall sections by fused filament additive manufacturing; and (2) characterizing their permeability using a modified falling head permeability measurement device and testing procedure. A detailed approach is also proposed to select the appropriate scaling factor to produce the samples by 3D printing. Comparison between numerical, semi-analytical, and experimental predictions of the impact of coating amount and degree of uniformity on wall permeability is presented. Despite the inherent sensitivity of permeability to pore space characteristics, a very good agreement is reported between simulations and experiments with a 19.3% mean discrepancy for the seven magnified structures tested. The proposed procedure is a relatively easy-to-implement and inexpensive method that may find many applications in the field of porous media.

Automated summary

The study proposes an experimental magnified twin approach based on kinematic similarity to characterize the permeability of printed magnified porous wall sections, presenting comparisons between numerical, semi-analytical, and experimental predictions on the impact of coating amount and degree of uniformity on wall permeability. Despite the sensitivity of permeability to pore space characteristics, a good agreement between simulations and experiments is reported, indicating the potential of the proposed method in porous media applications.