The Open Transport Phenomena Journal

2013, 5 : 1-6
Published online 2013 May 31. DOI: 10.2174/1877729501305010001
Publisher ID: TOTPJ-5-1

The Effective Pore Diameter of a Three-Dimensional Numerical Model for Estimating Heat and Fluid Flow Characteristics in Metal Foams

Fujio Kuwahara and Yutaro Fumoto
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan.

ABSTRACT

A three-dimensional numerical model is proposed to determine heat and fluid flow characteristics in metal foams. A series of full three-dimensional numerical calculations was performed to reveal complex three-dimensional velocity, pressure and temperature fields within three-dimensional porous structures of the metal foams. These numerical results are processed to obtain the macroscopic characteristics such as the permeability, inertia, dispersion and interstitial heat transfer coefficients. An effective pore diameter concept has been proposed to correlate the resulting heat and fluid flow characteristics with available empirical correlations.

Keywords:

Porous media, Numerical simulation, Metal foam, Pressure drop, Permeability, Convection, Periodic boundary condition.