Abstract
Porous foam metal has great application prospects in the field of compact heat exchangers. The characteristics of heat transfer and resistance for foam metal with random structure and different porosities (30%, 50%, 70% and 90%) were studied by finite element method in this study. The generated foam structures can be considered as homogeneous model and has better heat exchange capacity at higher inlet flow rate, and the boundary layer can develop well along the flow direction. The open–cell foammetal structure has a uniform heat transfer perpendicular to the flow direction. The bottom plate temperature of the low–porosity structure is more uniform at low flow rates. The intermediate porosities (50% and 70%) at high flow rates has a higher uniformity. As the porosity decreases, the internal pressure increases significantly and the pressure loss also becomes significantly larger. The corresponding optimal porosity is 57%, 66% and 76% at inlet flow rates of 0.001 m/s, 0.01 m/s and 0.1 m/s, respectively.
Highlights
It is important to improve the efficiency of heat exchangers and to reduce costs of equipment maintenance by enhancing heat transfer
There is a temperature boundary layer existing in the skeleton, and its thickness is gradually reduced with increasing inlet flow velocity resulting in a better developed boundary layer along the flow direction
The heat transfer, temperature uniformity of the bottom plate, resistance and field synergy degree inside metal foams was simulated by finite element method in this study
Summary
It is important to improve the efficiency of heat exchangers and to reduce costs of equipment maintenance by enhancing heat transfer. Methods to achieve this purpose can be divided into passive technologies [1] and active technologies [2]. Mancin et al [18, 19] studied the heat transfer and pressure drop inside aluminum foam with different parameters, and the results show that heat transfer coefficient increases as the pore density increases. Et al [21] presented an analytical study on the forced convection heat transfer characteristics in pipes filled high porosity open-cell metal-foam. The optimal solutions were obtained in the simulation range by focusing on the heat transfer capacity, the temperature of base plate and resistance characteristics
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