Pressure Drop and Forced Convective Heat Transfer in Porous Media

Metal foams, a new class of porous material with highly permeable structure and higher porosity (>0.60) compared with classical porous granular beds, are a viable solution to enlarge the thermal exchange area and provide a high heat capacity and high specific area. These metal foams are available in a number of solid materials with different porosities and pore size.
There is a current lack of understanding regarding metal foam microstructure parameters’ effects on hydraulic and thermal parameters. This is a barrier to the design and implementation of various industrial applications. The current study aims to discover the effects of the pore shape and morphological parameters in terms of pore size and porosity at relatively low ranges of porosity on fluid flow and conductive and convective thermal transport phenomena. The manufacturing defects were tracked using the image processing technique for scanned surfaces samples. The effect of these defects on the thermal and hydraulic parameters was also studied.