On the Role of Radiation in Low Density Silicon Carbide Foams

There are a variety of foams that can be used in thermal protection and/or thermal insulation systems. At high temperature (> 1000 K) thermal radiation may be important or dominate heat transfer in a foam; however, studies based on more detailed thermal radiation analysis are limited. In this paper foams are considered to be semitransparent, because radiation can penetrate through the pore (or void) space and/or foam skeleton (ligament), depending on the materials from which the foams are made. Of particular interest of this study is to understand how the properties of foam material such as its density, mean cell size, etc. affect the radiative transfer through silicon carbide (SiC) foams. In the paper, the dimensionless strut diameter is considered an important parameter of foams, and the radiative properties of the foams are analyzed by Mie scattering theory. The attenuation/extinction behavior of SiC foams can be considered as a function of the dimensionless strut diameter of the foam. The results reveal that the foam properties can significantly reduce radiative heat transfer through the high temperature foam used for the thermal protection.