Characterization of a convection-based support microstructure through a flow resistance parameter.

Modern convection-based supports differ substantially in pore size, porosity, and microstructure topology. Due to such variability, it is challenging to evaluate the contribution of a particular microstructure topology on flow resistance. We demonstrated that the flow resistance parameter ( ϕ $\phi $ ) introduced decades ago can be used as a criterion to evaluate the effect of microstructure topology on a pressure drop when the pore size is used as a characteristic support dimension. Furthermore, the ϕ $\phi $ value of simple cubic packing was calculated over the entire range of open porosity and compared to the ϕ $\phi $ values determined for pressure drop models derived for particular convection-based supports and experimental values of various convection-based supports from the literature. It was shown that different convection-based supports become clustered into distinct groups when plotted according to their ϕ $\phi $ and open porosity values, allowing their discrimination.