Abstract:
Various porous materials exist as natural substances and man-made porous materials are widely used in science, engineering, and industry because of their unique thermophysical properties. Porous materials are characterized by their porosity (i.e., the void volume divided by the total volume). However, accurate estimation of effective thermal and transport properties of porous materials such as thermal conductivity, mass diffusivity, intrinsic permeability etc. relies not only on porosity but also pore size, morphology, connectedness and other characteristics. This talk will present estimations of anisotropic thermal conductivity and permeability of porous materials based on high-resolution (~1 µm) micro-tomography measured by tomographic X-ray microscope. The pore-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and statistical models can consider connectedness of the solid matrix and the filling fluid to elucidate how the phase distribution governs the heat transfer and fluid flow. The accurate prediction of anisotropic properties of porous materials is critical to estimate the device-level heat and mass transfer performance of systems applying porous materials. The unique modeling tool can be conveniently applied to both natural and man-made porous materials and facilitate R&D in additive manufacturing, energy conversion and storage, reservoir engineering, hydrogeology, water percolation, etc.
Short Bio
Dr. Xianglin Li joined the Mechanical Engineering Department of University of Kansas as assistant professor in 2014. He has published more than 40 refereed journal articles and multiple U.S. Department of Energy and National Laboratory reports. His current research projects include developing direct methanol fuel cells for stationary applications (funded by U.S. Department of Energy), designing high-power & high-capacity Li-O2 batteries (funded by NSF), providing thermal management solutions to rechargeable batteries (supported by industrial partners), as well as understanding heat and mass transfer properties of novel thermal management systems for space technologies (funded by NASA EPSCoR). Before joining KU, Dr. Li served as Senior Scientific Engineering Associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In this capacity, he was involved with full fuel cycle analysis of non-conventional natural gas production and usage, as well as technical analyses to support the development of energy efficiency standards for appliances and other commercial equipment. Dr. Xianglin Li received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 2012, where he investigated the liquid-vapor two-phase heat and mass transfer coupled with electrochemical reactions in porous fuel cell electrodes.
Host: Professor Sophie Wang
