A Prospective Protocol for Testing Order Dependent Wicking in Cellulose Sheets

Porous cellulose materials retain structural and moisture histories that complicate interpretation of permeability and capillary uptake measurements. We propose order-contrast porometry (OCP), a testable measurement strategy in which nominally equivalent humidity excursions (H) and mechanical compression pulses (C) are applied in reversed order to matched porous specimens. Following common final conditioning, the resulting response difference is summarized by an order-contrast statistic D = log(W_HC/W_CH), where W is a prespecified wicking observable. The mechanistic premise is that humidity-induced relaxation and strain-induced pore rearrangement may act noncommutatively on latent microstructural states. This premise does not require new physical laws and does not, by itself, establish a new measurement method: order sensitivity is already plausible from established hygromechanical hysteresis. The decisive proposed test is whether OCP provides reproducible, out-of-sample information about independently measured pore structure or processing history beyond conventional thickness, mass, single-perturbation and wicking measurements. We specify matched-sheet randomization, equal-duration stimulus slots, sham controls, environmental normalization, optical transport tracking, independent microstructural validation, and a predeclared statistical hierarchy. Null results, transient-only contrasts, and contrasts fully explained by moisture or contact-angle changes are explicit falsification outcomes. This article reports a research hypothesis and a prospective validation protocol; no OCP experiments or outcome data are claimed.