Numerical investigation of convective heat transfer in a plane channel filled with metal foam under local thermal non-equilibrium

Abstract

The present work consists on convective heat transfer modeling in a plate heat exchanger filled with metal foam under local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE). The metal foam was inserted to fill completely the studied channel, which is crossed by a fluid. The modified Brinkman-Forchheimer extended Darcy model is used in the porous layer, while the macroscopic two-energy equation model is used for the thermal field. The channel walls are maintained at a constant temperature and the velocity at the inlet is supposed uniform. A dimensionless formulation is developed to perform a parametric study in terms of certain dimensionless variables, and solved by the finite volume method (FVM). The results include the effect of the interstitial heat transfer coefficient and the solid to fluid thermal conductivity of different type of metal foams. The results were used to estimate the influence of the convective and conductive contributions using open-celled metal foams with high porosity. It has been shown that such supports can bring a significant enhancement for the heat transfer.