An Investigation into Hydraulic Permeability of Fibrous Membranes with Nonwoven Random and Quasi-Parallel Structures

Fibrous membranes with a nonwoven random structure and a quasi-parallel fibrous structure can be fabricated by the electrospinning technique. The membranes with different structures exhibited different behaviors to a hydraulic flow passing through the membranes. This work presents the effects of the fiber arrangement, fiber diameter, and deformations of the fibers on the hydraulic permeability. The results showed that the hydraulic flow can generate an extrusion pressure which affects the porosity and pore structure of the fibrous membranes. The quasi-parallel fibrous membranes and nonwoven membranes exhibited similar variation tendencies to the change of the experimental variables. However, the quasi-parallel fibrous membranes exhibited a higher sensibility to the change of the hydraulic flow rate. The hydraulic permeability of the quasi-parallel fibrous membranes was further analyzed with packing state models in this work.