Directional saturation of a strongly bimodal pore size distribution carbon interlock fabric: Measurement and multiphase flow modeling

This study focuses on the analysis of the directionality of saturation of materials with bimodal pore size distributions. The material studied is an anisotropic carbon interlock with highly contrasted dual-scale porosity, with heavy warp and light weft tows. Experimentally, 6 configurations are tested using injection combined with dielectric sensors to measure saturation times and unsaturated lengths. The experimental results show that this material has a high contrast in dual-scale porosity and the unsaturation is anisotropic. In parallel, a two-phase flow in porous media continuum model is developed within the OpenFOAM® toolbox of libraries to simulate the transient impregnation. The need to use a tensorial relative permeability and its alignment with the saturated permeability is analyzed by a numerical multiphase mesoscale flow model. The combined experimental and numerical analysis paves the way for a methodology to analyze the saturation of various bimodal pore size distribution materials. •Provide experimental evidences of the directionality of the unsaturated lengths and saturation times.•Propose a saturation modeling and a multiphase flow numerical approach that encompass directionality of saturation kinetics.•Discuss the emergence of tensorial relative permeability and its alignment with the saturated permeability.