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 ( ) 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 value of simple cubic packing was calculated over the entire range of open porosity and compared to the 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 and open porosity values, allowing their discrimination.