Insights into poroelastic media flow

孔弹性材料是一种具有充液孔隙的弹性多孔固体，通常这种固体具有粘弹性。多孔介质中的流体流动与多孔介质的变形是内在耦合的。我们最近开发了一种具有高空间和时间分辨率的测量孔隙弹性材料（如生物组织）内部应变场的技术。其他工作通常是对孔隙弹性材料进行宏观实验，并使用这些结果来确定这些材料的集总参数模型、分析模型或有限元分析模型的参数。这些模型包括对固体相的描述和固体基质的渗透率作为应变或孔隙率的函数的假设。这些模型很难验证，因为很难独立表征大多数材料的固体基体。从长远来看，该研究项目将发展孔隙弹性材料的表征、建模和设计方面的专业知识，应用于生物技术、机器人和环境等不同领域。在这个研究项目的未来5年里，我们将开发具有可调性能的孔弹性材料的方法，我们将开发用于表征单个组件和组合孔弹性材料的方法，包括我们的应变场测量方法适应这些人工材料。我们将应用这些工具来验证常见的孔隙弹性模型和表征方法，在那里我们可以将识别的模型参数与独立测量的材料特性进行比较。测量的应变场将帮助我们在微观层面上理解潜在的物理现象。我们还将应用这些工具来帮助阐明在文献中报道的现象，这些现象仍然缺乏一个普遍同意的解释，例如压实的孔弹性材料的流动阻力随流速的增加和减少的滞后行为。这些研究的结果将应用于生物组织样本（切除的猪皮）的初步工作。该项目计划在未来5年内资助2名博士生、3名硕士生和6名本科生。这些HQP的选择将遵循公平的招聘惯例，以允许我的团队继续保持多样性，并对我们的研究创新产生积极影响。除了增加我们对孔隙弹性材料的理解之外，所提出的工作将为将这一研究项目扩展到组织工程、过滤技术和人机交互等应用领域开辟新的机会。

Poroelastic materials consist of an elastic porous solid with fluid-filled pores, and in general this solid can show viscoelastic properties. Fluid flow in the porous matrix and deformation of this matrix are inherently coupled. We have recently developed a technique for measuring the strain field inside a poroeleastic material such as biological tissue with high spatial and temporal resolution. Other work typically performs macroscopic experiments on poroelastic materials and uses these results to identify parameters for lumped parameter models, analytical models or finite element analysis models of these materials. These models include assumptions for the description of the solid phase and for the permeability of the solid matrix as a function of strain or porosity. These models are difficult to validate as it is difficult to characterize the solid matrix independently for most materials.    In the long term, this research program will develop expertise in the characterization, modelling and the design of poroelastic materials for applications in diverse areas such as biotechnology, robotics and the environment. Within the next 5 years of this research program we will develop methods to create poroelastic materials with tunable properties, and we will develop methods for the characterization of the individual components and the combined poroelastic materials including an adaptation of our strain field measurement method to these artificial materials. We will apply these tools to verify common poroelastic models and characterization methods, where we can compare the identified model parameters to independently measured material properties. The measured strain fields will help us understand the underlying physics at the microscopic level. We will also apply these tools to help elucidate phenomena reported in the literature that are still missing a generally agreed-on explanation such as the hysteretic behaviour of the flow resistance of a compacted poroelastic material for an increasing and decreasing flow rate. The findings of these studies will be applied to initial work on biological tissue samples (excised pig skin).    The projects planned for this grant will involve 2 PhD students, 3 MASc students and 6 undergraduate students over the next 5 years of this program. These HQP will be selected following equitable hiring practices to allow for continued diversity in my team with demonstrated positive impact on innovations in our research. Beyond increasing our understanding of poroelastic materials, the proposed work will open new opportunities to expand this research program toward application areas such tissue engineering, filtration technology and human-robot interaction.