Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a study of the breaking process of composite membranes used in the water desalination. Temperature, fluid pressure and accumulate retained fluid are remarkable parameters, which are likely to damage these membranes.Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors adopt the dynamics of a fiber bundle model to investigate the breaking process of composite membranes with fibres distributed parallel to the direction of fluid flow. The model is based on the fiber bundle model where the fibres are randomly oriented.Findings: The obtained results show that the increase in the parameters leads to an avalanche rupture of the membrane fibre and also increases its porosity. Lifetime membranes exhibit an exponential and power law vs. the parameters.Originality/value: The accumulation of the retained fluid has a great effect on membranes than the temperature and fluid pressure.

This paper studies the failure process of composite membranes used in water desalination. The study is carried out within the framework of the fiber bundle model. Temperature, fluid pressure, and accumulation of the retained fluid are remarkable parameters damaging these membranes. However, the filtered particles are deposited on the membrane with a constant flux rate F; the retained particles can be diffused with a constant diffusion D, and consequently, a loading effect on the membrane fibers due to the flux of the fluid. However, the retained particles can damage the membrane by creating a space. Calculating the intact fiber density of the membrane allowed for determining the vacuum index membrane. The results show that the membrane vacuum index decreases exponentially with the ratio D/F. Moreover, the results show that the vacuum is created rapidly in very high-pressure values. The obtained results show that accumulation of the retained fluid has a great effect on membranes than the temperature and fluid pressure. In addition, the lifetime composite membranes used in water desalination increase exponentially with the D/F ratio.