Wicking of Liquids in Porous Media

Krishna M. Pillai is Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and Director of the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media, USA. One of Dr. Pillai's primary research interests lies in wicking and evaporation. He is co-author of Wicking in Porous Materials: Traditional and Modern Modeling Approaches (CRC Press, 2013), and the present volume is his second book on this topic. He has published extensively in reputed technical journals and presented his work at numerous international conferences.Dr. Pillai has collaborated with several companies, including SC Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, and Kimberly-Clark, improving product design through funded research, training, and consultancies. He was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER grant in 2004. Dr. Pillai earned his doctorate from the University of Delaware and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from I.I.T. Kanpur, India.Ryan Masoodi, Ph.D., is Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Architecture, Design, and Engineering at Thomas Jefferson University, USA. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media. Dr. Masoodi's research focuses on transport phenomena in porous materials, with particular emphasis on capillarity-driven wicking and flow in swelling porous media, integrating theoretical modeling, laboratory experimentation, and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics. He has published extensively on wicking, permeability evolution, and mold filling in natural fiber composites, authoring more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. Dr. Masoodi is co-editor of Wicking in Porous Materials: Traditional and Modern Modeling Approaches (CRC Press, 2013). His research has been supported by multiple federal and state grants as well as industry-sponsored projects.Abul Borkot Md Rafiqul Hasan is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM), USA, working in the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media under Professor Krishna M. Pillai. His research focuses on fluid and thermal transport in porous media, including capillary-driven wicking, evaporation, non-isothermal transport, and contaminant migration in the vadose zone. His work integrates carefully designed experiments with analytical and numerical modeling, including Darcy-scale and Richards-equation-based formulations, as well as multiphysics simulations. Abul Borkot Md Rafiqul Hasan has authored and co-authored multiple peer-reviewed journal publications and book chapters in heat and mass transfer, porous media, and thermal-fluid sciences. His broader interests include energy systems, environmental transport processes, and data-driven modeling for complex transport phenomena. He has received several academic honors and fellowships during his doctoral studies and has been actively involved in teaching and mentoring undergraduate students. His long-term goal is to pursue an academic career in thermal-fluids and transport phenomena, contributing to both research and engineering education.

• 1. Introduction 2. A synopsis of important theories 3. Advances in modeling of wicking using the capillary models 4. Advances in sharp-front model applications 5. Advances in diffused-front model applications 6. Modeling Wicking in Swelling Porous Media 7. Advances in wicking plus evaporation modeling using Pore Network Model 8. Wicking in Textiles 9. Biomedical Applications of Wicking 10. Wicking in MEMS devices 11. Wicking in Energy Application 12. Vadose Zone Modeling 13. Wicking in Thin Porous Media 14. Wicking in Nano Porous Media 15. Printing Applications 16. Application of Neural Networks and AI in the modelling of wicking 17. Absorption Coefficient 18. Data Mining in Wicking 19. Modeling of wicking during Printing on Paper