Temperature Dependency of the Effective Thermal Conductivity of Nickel Based Metal Foams

This article presents experimental results of the thermal conductivity of sintered metal foams, which were manufactured by the Slip Reaction Foam Sintering (SRFS) process. For the determination of the thermal conductivity, the Transient Plane Source Technique, also known as Hot Disk, was employed. The thermal conductivity of cellular solids differs from that of their corresponding dense material. Therefore, the various pore size level effects contributing to the thermal conductivity are accounted for by introducing an effective thermal conductivity λ_eff. The thermal conductivity of the strut material, a sintered packed bed, was determined up to 700°C and compared to similar materials. The thermal diffusivity could also be determined by the Laser-Flash method and compared to the Hot Disk values. For the foams, λ_eff was determined for a total porosity of 0.85 up to 700°C. In this article, a dependency between the porosity and λ_eff can be shown. The linear rise of λ_eff up to 400°C can be due to the increase of the thermal conductivity of the solid phase. The measurements are validated by comparison of the received specific heat with values received by thermogravimetry measurements. The general applicability of the measurement method to heterogeneous materials such as metal foams is discussed and an outlook about further investigations is given.