Effective permeability of composites containing flaky inclusions with various spatial distributions

A scheme for predicting the effective permeability of composites containing flaky inclusions with various spatial distributions based on equivalent parameters of homogeneous comparison materials is proposed. This scheme leads to completely explicit formulas for the effective permeability in terms of microstructural characteristics that characterize the shape, concentration, distribution, and orientation of the inclusions. This scheme can also retrieve the intrinsic permeability of any ellipsoidal inclusions from the measured effective permeability of composites. The intrinsic permeability of flaky and crumb-like carbonyl iron powders obtained from different concentrations is almost identical, and the predicted effective permeability of composites containing random and oriented flaky inclusions based on the numerical results agree well with the experimental data.