Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer in Porous Metals for Cooling Applications
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Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer in Porous Metals for Cooling Applications EDGAR AVALOS GAUNA and YUYUAN ZHAO Porous metals have low densities and novel physical, mechanical, thermal, electrical, and acoustic properties. Hence, they have attracted a large amount of interest over the last few decades. One of their applications is for thermal management in the electronics industry because of their fluid permeability and thermal conductivity. The heat transfer capability is achieved by the interaction between the internal channels within the porous metal and the coolant flowing through them. This paper studies the fluid flow and heat transfer in open-cell porous metals manufactured by space holder methods by numerical simulation using software ANSYS Fluent. A 3D geometric model of the porous structure was created based on the face-centered-cubic arrangement of spheres linked by cylinders. This model allows for different combinations of pore parameters including a wide range of porosity (50 to 80 pct), pore size (400 to 1000 lm), and metal particle size (10 to 75 lm). In this study, water was used as the coolant and copper was selected as the metal matrix. The flow rate was varied in the Darcian and Forchheimer’s regimes. The permeability, form drag coefficient, and heat transfer coefficient were calculated under a range of conditions. The numerical results showed that permeability increased whereas the form drag coefficient decreased with porosity. Both permeability and form drag coefficient increased with pore size. Increasing flow rate and decreasing porosity led to better heat transfer performance. DOI: 10.1007/s11663-017-0981-1 Ó The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication
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INTRODUCTION
POROUS metals, or metallic foams, are metals with pores deliberately integrated in their structure.[1] The pores are of crucial importance because they give new properties to the material. For applications requiring good permeability to fluids, the internal network of the cells in the porous metal must be open. The open-cell porous metals are emerging as an effective material for heat transfer management.[2] In active cooling applications using the open-cell structures, the cooling system is composed of the porous metal medium and the fluid is used as a coolant flowing through the material. In the design of heat exchangers with porous metals, two key properties are important: the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop across the sample,[3] which are strongly affected by the pore structure.[4] Porous copper manufactured by the space holder methods, such as the Lost Carbonate Sintering (LCS)
EDGAR AVALOS GAUNA and YUYUAN ZHAO are with the School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GH, UK. Contact e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript submitted December 2, 2016. METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
process,[5] is a promising type of material for use as heat exchangers.[6] However, there is a very limited amount of data available on the fluid flow and the heat transfer behavior of this ty
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