Approximate Packing of Binary Mixtures of Cylindrical Particles.

Particle packing plays an essential role in industry and chemical engineering. In this work, the discrete element method is used to generate the cylindrical particles and densify the binary cylindrical particle mixtures under the poured packing conditions. The influences of the aspect ratio and volume fraction of particles on the packing structure are measured by planar packing fraction.

Analysis of Tortuosity in Compacts of Ternary Mixtures of Spherical Particles.

Herein, an approach is proposed to analyze the tortuosity of porous electrodes using the radical Voronoi tessellation. For this purpose, a series of particle compacts geometrically similar to the actual porous electrode were generated using discrete element method; the radical Voronoi tessellation was constructed for each compact to characterize the structural properties; the tortuosity of compact porous structure was simulated by applying the Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm on radical Voronoi tessellation. Finally, the relationships were established between the tortuosity and the composition of the ternary particle mixture, and between the tortuosity and the radical Voronoi cell parameters.

Exploring 3D microstructural evolution in Li-Sulfur battery electrodes using in-situ X-ray tomography.

Lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries offer higher theoretical specific capacity, lower cost and enhanced safety compared to current Li-ion battery technology. However, the multiple reactions and phase changes in the sulfur conversion cathode result in highly complex phenomena that significantly impact cycling life. For the first time to the authors' knowledge, a multi-scale 3D in-situ tomography approach is used to characterize morphological parameters and track microstructural evolution of the sulfur cathode across multiple charge cycles.