Project description
A greener, more versatile future for non-woven textiles
Fibrous materials like paper and flax mats hold immense potential as sustainable alternatives to plastics. However, their susceptibility to humidity and wetting has limited their widespread use. With this in mind, the ERC-funded ElCapiTex project aims to revolutionise the way we understand and utilise wet non-woven textiles. ElCapiTex focuses on characterising and modelling wet non-woven textile behaviour and properties during manufacturing processes. To achieve this, the project merges insights from fluid-structure interactions, suspension transport, elastocapillarity (liquid-air interface-induced deformation), and poroelasticity. By employing experimental model systems and theoretical models, the project seeks to bridge the gap between pore-scale mechanisms and network behaviour.
Objective
Fibrous media are ubiquitous in natural and engineered systems, due to their versatility, flexibility and functionality. Nonwovens (i.e. entangled fibrous networks), and especially natural fibre -based materials such as paper or flax mats, are heavily used for a variety of applications, and could be largely developed as a sustainable alternative for plastics. The first limitation of their widespread use is their response to humidity, wetting or drying, which is unavoidable in many applications, and is a key step of their manufacturing processes. The ElCapiTex project aims at characterizing and modelling the specific behaviour and properties of wet non-woven textiles (consolidation, imbibition, mechanical response, deformation) and of their manufacturing processes. In order to characterize the complex interplay between the various physical mechanisms that gives rise to the global properties of textiles (hydrodynamics, capillarity, elasticity, swelling), we will combine different approaches coming from three recent active research areas of fluid-structure interactions: the transport of suspensions of elastic objects, elastocapillarity (i.e. the deformation induced by the capillary forces associated with liquid-air interfaces), and poroelasticity. We will work with a hierarchy of experimental model systems of increasing complexity, in particular by fabricating model nonwoven sheets from gel fibre suspensions. We will further build theoretical models, based on recent statistical approaches used to describe the mechanical properties of dry textiles. Understanding these physical mechanisms is mandatory to develop innovative processes and materials; reconciling fundamental pore-scale mechanisms with network behaviour will allow for the design of tailored fibrous media with specific properties.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
91128 Palaiseau Cedex
France