__________ Porous Microstructure Generator (PMG) __________

Version 1.5 - December 2022

Developers: Dr Daniel Niblett, Dr Omar E. Godinez-Brizuela, Dr ‪Adrian Mularczyk‬, Dr Senyou An.

This project is not funded directly, but is a side project of the developers to extend access of free tools for porous microstructure modelling and simulation.

If you are able to support the project through donations or through future project proposals, please let us know as it will increase the speed and quality of updates. After 6 months, the current version of the software will stop working, which is implemented to allow critical updates to be fixed and a new version uploaded.

This tool is developed on MacOS but has been extended to windows to allow more users (NOTE: Therefore differences in some functions may exist and are not tested).

For more information about PMG please visit: https://danielniblett.com/porous-microstructure-generator/

Matlab is not required for the app to run, however, Matlab Runtime (which is free) will be automatically downloaded during the installation process.

__________ PMG Guide __________

We are working on a journal article and a guide for PMG. For now, default settings can be used to run and generate structures.

1. Open PMG
2. Navigate to specific particles wanted (e.g. fibres)
3. Choose background grid resolution (Make sure to keep cells isotropic (i.e. the same aspect ratio))
4. Choose particle size (either in m or voxel scales)
5. Click the run button and wait (structures with high volume fraction and >150 cells will be slow)
6. The 3D structure will be plotted on the right.
7. To run another algorithm on top, click the 'Keep Structure' button
8. To create a film on top, go to film formation tab and change slider.

___________ Analysis ____________

There are several options for analysis:

1. Pore network extraction (pore and throat radius distribution and connectivity distribution)
2. Pore network simulation (permeability, diffusivity, PC-S curves, Kr-S curves)
3. Lattice-Boltzmann simulation (permeability, velocity, pressure and solid fields) - NOTE: Downscaling will be required as we have not optimised the LBM algorithm for large scale grids (due to the speed of Matlab).
4. Exporting to OpenFOAM - This will generate a complete openfoam case, all you need to do is load openfoam and in terminal do: ./RunDiffusion or ./RunSinglePhaseFlow and the meshing and simulation will begin.

___________ Settings ______________

There is now a preferences tab which allows you to:

1. Turn off the smoothing of the .stl generator to keep the voxel structure
2. Set meshing parameters (resolution and surface refinement for OpenFOAM)
3. Other un-used settings as of this version.