Numerical Simulations of Flow-Assisted Mixed Convection in a Vertical Channel Filled with High Porosity Metal Foams

Abstract

In this work, two-dimensional numerical simulations of flow-assisted mixed convection in a vertical channel filled with high porosity metal foams have been carried out by using the commercial ANSYS FLUENT. In order to enhance heat transfer, the vertical channel is filled with aluminum metal foams of different pores per inch (PPI). Four different metal foams PPI 10, 20, 30, and 45, with porosity values varying from 0.90 to 0.95 are considered in this study. The geometry under consideration consists of metal foam attached to the aluminum plate in the vertical channel and the resulting problem becomes conjugate heat transfer. The metal foam region is considered as a homogeneous porous medium with the Darcy Extended Forchheirmer model to evaluate the flow characteristics while the local thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer model is considered for the heat transfer analysis. Initially, numerical results are compared with the experimental results available in literature and the agreement was found to be good. Parametric studies show that as the metal foam PPI increases, the pressure drop increases, while the heat transfer is seen to increase with an increase in the pore density of the metal foam.