There has been significant interest in the porous microstructure generator which has increased its use from around ~100 users to approximately 800. It is difficult to keep up with the speed of requests considering this app is not part of my postdoc but could become part of fellowship applications. In the future depending on the usefulness of the app, I may have to think about how to fund this project.
Regardless, whenever I find time, I try and make progress and here are some interesting updates:
Algorithm Speed Up (x50)
The algorithms behind PMG have been updated which can handle much higher voxel resolutions and at an increased speed. For example, PMG 1.5 required 170 seconds for generating a fibrous material on a (400 x 400 x 100) grid, in the new version this has been reduced to 3 seconds (56 times faster). This allows the images you see above to be generated in a short timescale (2 mm sample, with 7 µm diameter fibres at 80% porosity required 200 seconds), which would have taken around 3 hours in PMG 1.5.
Carbon Fibre Cloth
Carbon cloth microstructures will now be possible, with a new and improved weave algorithm. In this module, the carbon tow porosity, aspect ratio and carbon fibre size can be specified including the aperture size between each tow to produce large scale structures. The plain weave algorithm has been updated so that it always works now, see an example carbon cloth above.
Particle Deposition
Particles with a specified size can be deposited on the microstructure in a variety of ways to create interesting microstructures which could be used as the input for simulations investigating rough surfaces or catalyst distribution:
These features may take a while to be implemented but the codes are 90% completed in terms of smoothing out their integration. If you are interested in the progress of the app and are able to support the project then get in touch!
Daniel Niblett Research 