Convective Heat Transfer Analysis of Open Cell Metal Foam for Solar Air Heaters

A one-dimensional heat transfer model for open-cell metal foam is presented. Three aluminum foams having different areas, relative densities, ligament diameters, and number of pores per inch were analyzed. The effective thermal conductivity and the heat transfer increased with the number of pores per inch. The effective thermal conductivity of the foams can be up to four times higher than that of solid aluminum. The resulting improvement in heat transfer can be as high as 50 percent. The maximum heat transfer for the aluminum foams occurs at a pore Reynolds number of 52. The heat transfer, in addition, becomes insensitive to the flow regime for pore Reynolds numbers beyond 200.