A Study on Effective Thermal Conductivity of Porous Metals

Abstract

In this study, the effective thermal conductivity of porous metals, in which fluid of different thermal conductivity was contained, was measured. Since the porous metals have a mesh configuration, the values of the effective thermal conductivity estimated by the accepted equations reported up to now do not agree with the experimental values. Therefore, a simple one-dimensional analytical model and two three-dimensional numerical calculation models were examined and compared with the experimental values. Consequently, it was found that the values estimated by the three types of model agreed with the experimental values within a 30% error for the porous metals. These models could indeed be applied to estimate the effective thermal conductivity of materials such as porous metals. © 1992, The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.