Effect of Porosity on Flow Behavior and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Sintered Woven Wire Mesh Structures

The structure of sintered woven wire mesh is one of classical porous medium. The porosity is one of the major parameters for the porous media. This paper presents the experimental results of the effect of porosity on internal flow behavior and heat transfer characteristics of sintered metal wire mesh structures. All the three test pieces made of stainless steel wires with the same wire diameter (d = 0.14mm) were sintered after woven. One of them was sintered using two sintered metal wire mesh structures with different porosities (55% and 26%) so that the porosity changed along the flow direction. The porosities of the other two test pieces are 55% and 26%, respectively. The experiments were completed with the Reynolds number in the range of 10 to 42. The permeability and inertia coefficient of each test piece were obtained as well as the friction factor. Infrared camera was used to measure the wall temperature of the test pieces to get the Nusselt numbers. The results show that for all test pieces permeability increases as porosity increases, while inertia coefficient shows the opposite trend. Pressure drop of all pieces increases with respect to the mass flow rate. Friction factor decreases as the Reynolds number increases. The curves for test piece #3 fall between those for test piece #1 and #2 and are more close to that for test #2. Nusselt number increases when the Reynolds number keeps arising. However, The Nusselt numbers of the test piece with changed porosity are influenced by the flow direction. There are no significant correlations of the flow behavior and heat transfer characteristics between the test piece with changed porosity and the other two test pieces with constant porosities.