Permeability of 3D Printed Open-Cell Foam Produced Using Selective Laser Sintering

Abstract

3D printing technology has gained popularity among researchers since it can produce complex geometries, such as open-cell foam. The open-cell foam shows potential in a range of applications such as energy absorption, thermal management, filtering, and acoustic damping. However, the feasibility of the applications depends on the material used to construct the 3D printed open-cell foam and its physical properties e.g, pore size and porosity. Therefore, understanding the physical properties is crucial in classifying this new generation of open-cell foams. This study aims to determine the permeability of 3D printed foams using the Forchheimer equation and compared the results with a fractional estimation method to reduce the duration of future experiments. The fractional results were validated through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The result shows that the proposed estimation method can be used to determine the permeability of 3D printed foam with a height of 60 mm or larger, and up to six times larger than 5 PPI (pores per inch). However, it is recommended to conduct simulations of large pore size foam using a 3D model to accurately describe the local velocities in the free stream region.