Chemical engineering systems often involve a functional porous medium, such as in catalyzed reactive flows, fluid purifiers, and chromatographic separations. Ideally, the flow rates throughout the porous medium are uniform, and all portions of the medium contribute efficiently to its function. The permeability is a property of a porous medium that depends on pore geometry and relates flow rate to pressure drop. Additive manufacturing techniques raise the possibilities that permeability can be arbitrarily specified in three dimensions, and that a broader range of permeabilities can be achieved than by traditional manufacturing methods. Using numerical optimization methods, we show that designs with spatially varying permeability can achieve greater flow uniformity than designs with uniform permeability. We consider geometries involving hemispherical regions that distribute flow, as in many glass chromatography columns. By several measures, significant improvements in flow uniformity can be obtained by modifying permeability only near the inlet and outlet.

中文翻译：

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具有渐变渗透性的增材制造多孔柱的流动优化

化学工程系统通常涉及功能性多孔介质，例如催化反应流、流体净化器和色谱分离。理想情况下，整个多孔介质的流速是均匀的，并且介质的所有部分都有效地发挥其功能。渗透率是多孔介质的一种性质，它取决于孔隙几何形状并将流速与压降联系起来。增材制造技术提高了渗透率可以在三个维度上任意指定的可能性，并且可以实现比传统制造方法更广泛的渗透率。使用数值优化方法，我们表明具有空间变化渗透率的设计可以实现比具有均匀渗透率的设计更好的流动均匀性。我们考虑涉及分布流动的半球形区域的几何形状，如在许多玻璃色谱柱中。通过一些措施，可以通过仅在入口和出口附近修改渗透率来显着改善流动均匀性。