Convective Heat Transfer Analysis of Open Cell Metal Foam for Solar Air Heaters

Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan ◽  
Pablo D. Quinones

A one-dimensional heat transfer model for open-cell metal foam is presented. Three aluminum foams having different areas, relative densities, ligament diameters, and number of pores per inch were analyzed. The effective thermal conductivity and the heat transfer increased with the number of pores per inch. The effective thermal conductivity of the foams can be up to four times higher than that of solid aluminum. The resulting improvement in heat transfer can be as high as 50 percent. The maximum heat transfer for the aluminum foams occurs at a pore Reynolds number of 52. The heat transfer, in addition, becomes insensitive to the flow regime for pore Reynolds numbers beyond 200.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 861-871
Author(s):  
Milad Saljooghi ◽  
Younes Bakhshan ◽  
Saeid Niazi ◽  
Jamshid Khorshidi

The Conception of thermo-physical properties of porous materials is a challenging task for scientists to conquer. The open cell metal foam increases heat transfer while energy dissipation, dimension and density of them which are constraints for modern technologies significantly reduce. In the present study, the open cell metal foams with four kinds of structures have been investigated numerically and experimentally and the effective thermal conductivity (ETC) of them have been extracted with using different base fluids such as water, air and paraffin. Also, various metals have been considered copper, aluminum, nickel and silver. Finally, a validated correlation for calculation of ETC of open cell metal foams has been developed which is function of thermal conductivity of fluid and metal, porosity and geometrical properties of pore that is applicable for all open cell metal foam approximately. The results show, good agreements between the modeling results and experimental data.


Author(s):  
Banjara Kotresha ◽  
N. Gnanasekaran

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss about the two-dimensional numerical simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer through high thermal conductivity metal foams filled in a vertical channel using the commercial software ANSYS FLUENT.Design/methodology/approachThe Darcy Extended Forchheirmer model is considered for the metal foam region to evaluate the flow characteristics and the local thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer model is considered for the heat transfer analysis; thus the resulting problem becomes conjugate heat transfer.FindingsResults obtained based on the present simulations are validated with the experimental results available in literature and the agreement was found to be good. Parametric studies reveal that the Nusselt number increases in the presence of porous medium with increasing thickness but the effect because of the change in thermal conductivity was found to be insignificant. The results of heat transfer for the metal foams filled in the vertical channel are compared with the clear channel in terms of Colburn j factor and performance factor.Practical implicationsThis paper serves as the current relevance in electronic cooling so as to open up more parametric and optimization studies to develop new class of materials for the enhancement of heat transfer.Originality/valueThe novelty of the present study is to quantify the effect of metal foam thermal conductivity and thickness on the performance of heat transfer and hydrodynamics of the vertical channel for an inlet velocity range of 0.03-3 m/s.


Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan ◽  
Pable D. Quinones

A one-dimensional heat transfer model for open-cell metal foam is presented. The model includes both the conduction and the convection in the ligaments and in the pores of the foam. It uses the typical foam parameters provided by the manufacturers. Three aluminum foams having different relative surface areas, relative densities, ligament diameters, and number of pores per inch are analyzed and an effective thermal conductivity is determined. The heat transfer increases with the number of pores per inch. The resulting improvement in heat transfer can be as high as 57 percent over solid aluminum. The model is general enough such that it can handle other types of foam and geometries. For simulations using packages for thermal management, the foam can be modeled as a solid having an equivalent conductivity with an effective convection heat transfer on its outer surfaces. This eliminates the need to model the microscopic flow and heat transfer in and around the pores. It also allows quick feasibility studies and comparisons of different arrangements using aluminum foams for thermal management systems of high-power electronics. A few such simulations are presented in this work. The simulations show a big promise for using the foam in place of the traditional heat sinks for cooling high-power electronics: they reduce the cooling system’s weight substantially and reduce the maximum temperature significantly.


2016 ◽  
Vol 846 ◽  
pp. 500-505
Author(s):  
Wei Jing Dai ◽  
Yi Xiang Gan ◽  
Dorian Hanaor

Effective thermal conductivity is an important property of granular materials in engineering applications and industrial processes, including the blending and mixing of powders, sintering of ceramics and refractory metals, and electrochemical interactions in fuel cells and Li-ion batteries. The thermo-mechanical properties of granular materials with macroscopic particle sizes (above 1 mm) have been investigated experimentally and theoretically, but knowledge remains limited for materials consisting of micro/nanosized grains. In this work we study the effective thermal conductivity of micro/nanopowders under varying conditions of mechanical stress and gas pressure via the discrete thermal resistance method. In this proposed method, a unit cell of contact structure is regarded as one thermal resistor. Thermal transport between two contacting particles and through the gas phase (including conduction in the gas phase and heat transfer of solid-gas interfaces) are the main mechanisms. Due to the small size of particles, the gas phase is limited to a small volume and a simplified gas heat transfer model is applied considering the Knudsen number. During loading, changes in the gas volume and the contact area between particles are simulated by the finite element method. The thermal resistance of one contact unit is calculated through the combination of the heat transfer mechanisms. A simplified relationship between effective thermal conductivity and loading pressure can be obtained by integrating the contact units of the compacted powders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoubida Haddad ◽  
Farida Iachachene ◽  
Eiyad Abu-Nada ◽  
Ioan Pop

AbstractThis paper presents a detailed comparison between the latent functionally thermal fluids (LFTFs) and nanofluids in terms of heat transfer enhancement. The problem used to carry the comparison is natural convection in a differentially heated cavity where LFTFs and nanofluids are considered the working fluids. The nanofluid mixture consists of Al2O3 nanoparticles and water, whereas the LFTF mixture consists of a suspension of nanoencapsulated phase change material (NEPCMs) in water. The thermophysical properties of the LFTFs are derived from available experimental data in literature. The NEPCMs consist of n-nonadecane as PCM and poly(styrene-co-methacrylic acid) as shell material for the encapsulation. Finite volume method is used to solve the governing equations of the LFTFs and the nanofluid. The computations covered a wide range of Rayleigh number, 104 ≤ Ra ≤ 107, and nanoparticle volume fraction ranging between 0 and 1.69%. It was found that the LFTFs give substantial heat transfer enhancement compared to nanofluids, where the maximum heat transfer enhancement of 13% was observed over nanofluids. Though the thermal conductivity of LFTFs was 15 times smaller than that of the base fluid, a significant enhancement in thermal conductivity was observed. This enhancement was attributed to the high latent heat of fusion of the LFTFs which increased the energy transport within the cavity and accordingly the thermal conductivity of the LFTFs.


2006 ◽  
Vol 128 (8) ◽  
pp. 784-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan ◽  
Rubén Picón-Feliciano ◽  
Ángel R. Álvarez-Hernández

The use of open-cell metal foam in contemporary technologies is increasing rapidly. Certain simplifying assumptions for the combined conduction∕convection heat transfer analysis in metal foam have not been exploited. Solving the complete, and coupled, fluid flow and heat transfer governing equations numerically is time consuming. A simplified analytical model for the heat transfer in open-cell metal foam cooled by a low-conductivity fluid is presented. The model assumes local thermal equilibrium between the solid and fluid phases in the foam, and neglects the conduction in the fluid. The local thermal equilibrium assumption is supported by previous studies performed by other workers. The velocity profile in the foam is taken as non-Darcean slug flow. An approximate solution for the temperature profile in the foam is obtained using a similarity transform. The solution for the temperature profile is represented by the error function, which decays in what looks like an exponential fashion as the distance from the heat base increases. The model along with the simplifying assumptions were verified by direct experiment using air and several aluminum foam samples heated from below, for a range of Reynolds numbers and pore densities. The foam samples were either 5.08- or 20.32‐cm-thick in the flow direction. Reasonably good agreement was found between the analytical and the experimental results for a considerable range of Reynolds numbers, with the agreement being generally better for higher Reynolds numbers, and for foam with higher surface area density.


Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan ◽  
Rube´n Pico´n-Feliciano

The use of open-cell metal foam in contemporary technologies is increasing rapidly. Certain simplifying assumptions for the combined conduction/convection heat transfer analysis in metal foam have not been exploited. Solving the complete, and coupled, fluid flow and heat transfer governing equations numerically is time consuming. A simplified analytical model for the heat transfer in open-cell metal foam cooled by a low-conductivity fluid is presented. The model assumes local thermal equilibrium between the solid and fluid phases in the foam, and neglects the conduction in the fluid. The local thermal equilibrium assumption is supported by previous studies performed by other workers. The velocity profile in the foam is taken as non-Darcean slug flow. An approximate solution for the temperature profile in the foam is obtained using a similarity transform. The solution for the temperature profile is represented by the error function, which decays in what looks like an exponential fashion as the distance from the heat base increases. The model along with the simplifying assumptions were verified by direct experiment using air and two aluminum foam samples heated from below, for a range of Reynolds numbers. Each foam sample was 5.08 cm-thick in the flow direction. One sample had a pore density of ten pores per inch while the other had twenty pores per inch. Very good agreement was found between the analytical and the experimental results for a considerable range of Reynolds number, with the agreement being generally better for higher Reynolds numbers, and for foam with higher surface area density.


2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (25-26) ◽  
pp. 5112-5120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan ◽  
Pablo D. Quiñones-Ramos ◽  
Edmundo Cruz-Ruiz ◽  
Miguel Vélez-Reyes ◽  
Elaine P. Scott

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