Modelling of average pore size and porosity of porous polycaprolactone/hydroxyapatite (PCL/HA) composite blends

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop mathematical relationship between average pore size and porosity of porous polycaprolactone/hydroxyapatite (PCL/HA) composite and investigate the combined effect of temperature and pressure of foaming process and presence of HA. Porous PCL/HA composite was prepared using supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) solid state foaming process. Three different temperatures and pressures of foaming process were varied at 35°C, 40°C, 45°C and 10MPa, 20MPa, 30MPa respectively. Meanwhile weight of HA was varied at 10, 20, 30 and 40 wt%. The result from analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Microsoft Excel found that average pore size is reduced with higher pressure and content of HA presence does not significantly affect the average pore size due to poor distribution of HA. Meanwhile for porosity, higher temperature is more dominant in increasing of porosity compared to the HA content. In addition, both designed models have low values of Average Absolute Relative Deviation (%AARD) and high value of coefficient of determination (R2) which reflects a good and satisfying result between the experimental values and model predicted values.