Abstract
Despite the efforts to develop new solutions to achieve the objectives of positive buildings in energy, a few studies in this area has been performed using a porous media foam type. The aim of this paper is to present the behaviour transfers of flow through a multi-structured porous media and to achieve the influence of the porosity and the thermal conductivity properties of the skeletal phase, and the interaction with a cross flow in order to get the equivalent of a perfect insulator. Therefore, in a specially made device, a finite volume method was applied to study a flow through a porous media foam-type, which was simulated to characterize the properties of the equivalent medium in terms of permeability and thermal conductivity. The analysis demonstrates that the solid phase composition and the medium porosity, as well as the distribution of pore size, are preponderant characteristics to constitute a foam structured media. Furthermore, the thermal boundary layer given by a forced convection through the porous medium has demonstrated the important influence of the flow phenomenon in a thermodynamic coupling. Lastly, three optimum configurations for the construction envisaging a balance of depleted thermal and dynamic powers for a relative conductivity *=10 were found between the velocity 2 10-3 (m/s) and 4 10-3 (m/s).
Highlights
A porous media foam type is characterized by its structure which contains a significant volume fraction of voids in addition to a continuous solid matrix that provides their structural performance
Using a generation model of threedimensional structures based on correlated random fields, a continuous solid matrix filled with non-regular pores was constructed to provide the necessary conditions to form a foam-like medium
A numerical Finite Volume model has been performed in order to thoroughly understand the thermodynamic behaviour of foam-like porous framework and to characterize some essentials properties as the thermal conductivity and the permeability in a non-linear system
Summary
A porous media foam type is characterized by its structure which contains a significant volume fraction of voids in addition to a continuous solid matrix that provides their structural performance. Mancin et al [7,8] analyzed the heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop for different samples of aluminum foam (5, 10, 20, 40 Pores Per Inch - PPI) They observed that the heat transfer coefficient increases with the pore density (i.e. the low pore size). Bhattacharya et al [9] presented an analytical and experimental study to determine the equivalent thermal conductivity, permeability and inertia coefficient of highly porous metal foams. They showed that the permeability increases with the pore diameter and the porosity of the medium, but the coefficient of inertia, depends only on the porosity
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