CFD Simulation of Open-Cell Aluminum Metal Foams for Pressure Drop Characterization

Many researchers have done the CFD simulation of open-cell aluminum metal foams with a unit cell with periodic boundary conditions. However, this does not represent a real life situation, as the foam-fluid interactions cannot be properly modeled. In the present study the simulation is done for metal foam with the more number of foam cells to proximate the conditions close to the actual situations. The CFD simulation of open-cell aluminum metal foams was done using ANSYS FLUENT. The results are obtained by solving the Continuity, Momentum and Energy equations and standard k-ε turbulence model is used for simulation. The boundary conditions applied are same as those applied during the experiments conducted at Heat Transfer Lab, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. In this study the Aluminum Alloy (Al 6101-T6) metal foam of pore density 10 ppi is used for CFD analysis.