Modeling the microstructure of biopolymer aerogels using Voronoi tessellation method

Abstract

The bulk properties of biopolymer aerogels depend on their microstructure, which can be tailored by different synthesis and drying methods. Biopolymer aerogels are characterized by a fibrillar morphology having a cellular-like network. The recently proposed constitutive modeling approach by Rege et al. [1] has shown good predictive capabilities in describing the mechanical behavior of such aerogels. Although the model describes the cellular nature and adheres to the cell‐size distributions of aerogels, it is based on the assumption that the network is made up of idealized square-shaped cells. In this contribution, the diversified cellular morphology of aerogels is described computationally using a Laguerre-Voronoi tessellation based approach [2]. The pore-size distribution (PSD) data obtained from experiments accounts for the random cell sizes within the network. Accordingly, Voronoi tessellations are generated to create periodic representative volume elements (RVEs) resembling the microstructural properties of the cellular network. This work is an extension of our previous Voronoi tessellation-based 2-d description of biopolymer aerogels [3].