Digital twin of a laser flash experiment helps to assess the thermal performance of metal foams

Abstract

Metal foams are a class of materials with immense potential. The complex topology in these lightweight systems is responsible for their outstanding mechanical and thermal properties. Furthermore, this is the same reason why thermal assessment of metal foams is challenging. While conventional analytical techniques provide useful data, modern-age technology allows to explore thermal transfer in metal foams in great detail by building a digital twin of the thermal characterisation experiment. In this work, high-accuracy measurements with a laser flash analysis instrument, processed with two effective-medium heat conduction models, are compared to a digital twin built with computed tomography and finite element analysis. This combination helps resolving complexity in analysing AlSi7Mg open-cell foams. Evidence of non-Fourier macroscopic heat conduction is found, which makes standard laser-flash analysis non-scalable.