Radiative heat transfer in honeycomb structures-New simple analytical and numerical approaches

Abstract

Porous Honeycomb Structures present the interest of combining, at the same time, high thermal insulating properties, low density and sufficient mechanical resistance. However, their thermal properties remain relatively unexplored. The aim of this study is the modelling of the combined heat transfer and especially radiative heat transfer through this type of anisotropic porous material.The equivalent radiative properties of the material are determined using ray-tracing procedures inside the honeycomb porous structure. From computational ray-tracing results, simple new analytical relations have been deduced. These useful analytical relations permit to determine radiative properties such as extinction, absorption and scattering coefficients and phase function functions of cell dimensions and optical properties of cell walls. The radiative properties of honeycomb material strongly depend on the direction of propagation. From the radiative properties computed, we have estimated the radiative heat flux passing through slabs of honeycomb core materials submitted to a 1-D temperature difference between a hot and a cold plate. We have compared numerical results obtained from Discrete Ordinate Method with analytical results obtained from Rosseland-Deissler approximation. This approximation is usually used in the case of isotropic materials. We have extended it to anisotropic honeycomb materials. Indeed a mean over incident directions of Rosseland extinction coefficient is proposed. Results tend to show that Rosseland-Deissler extended approximation can be used as a first approximation. Deviation on radiative conductivity obtained from Rosseland-Deissler approximation and from the Discrete Ordinated Method are lower than 6.7% for all the cases studied.