Thermal Applications of Open-Cell Metal Foams

3D numerical simulation of flow and conjugate heat transfer through a pore scale model of high porosity open cell metal foam

“…Again, the scale factor was a compromise based on reported values from the literature (Table 2). It should be mentioned that the values attributed to the ligament diameter (Tables 1 and 2) are not given by Ozmat et al ( [3]) but have been calculated here using their reported methodology. All other values are either reported in the stated sources or have been calculated from the models constructed here.…”

“…6). There is significant ambiguity between the theoretical and measured geometrical values of PPI metal foam pore density, especially concerning the pore diameter ( [11,3,32]). Details and validation of the geometry reconstruction and its properties are presented in Tables 1 and 2.…”

“…Phanikumar and Mahajan [8] studied natural convection heat transfer in a range of different high porosity metal foams while Boomsma et al [11] studied forced convection in various compressed aluminium metal foams in order to show that these perform well, enhancing heat transfer and improving efficiency compared to conventional compact heat exchangers. Similarly, Ozmat et al [3] showed experimental and analytical results for flow and heat transfer through reticulated metal foams, taking into consideration basic structural parameters and indicating advantages of their use in heat exchangers. Klein et al [4] conducted experiments with open cell aluminum foams of varying compression ratios, presenting correlations of the effective heat transfer coefficient with flow velocity for constant heat power supplied to the foam.…”

“…A novel material of this kind is the open-cell metal foam, which possesses such prominent features as light weight and high strength for structural applications and high convection coefficients with high area to volume ratios for heat transfer. The material is still being examined for its rheological characteristics and applications as well as for its heat transfer properties [1][2][3][4] and there have been recent advances in its application to compact heat exchangers and fuel cells [5,6].…”

Assessing the influence of four cutting methods on the thermal contact resistance of open-cell aluminum foam

“…Many authors appreciate the good quality of the resulting cut of open-cell foam, e.g. [39,40,30,41,42] amongst others. It is a contact-less method.…”