Permeability and Thermal Transport in Compressed Open-Celled Foams

Abstract

A computational methodology is proposed to describe the fluid transport in compressed open-celled metallic foams. Various unit-cell foam geometries are numerically deformed under uniaxial loads using a finite-element method. An algorithm is developed and implemented to deform the fluid domain mesh inside the unit-cell foam based on the deformed solid unit-cell geometry. Direct simulations of the fluid transport in these deformed meshes are then performed over a range of Reynolds numbers used in practical applications. The model is validated against available experimental results and correlations. A corrected model is proposed for the permeability of compressed foams as a function of strain for flows transverse to the direction of compression. The thermal conductivity of fluid-saturated foams is also computed. Compression of foams increases the conductivity transverse to the direction of compression and decreases the conductivity parallel to it.

The authors acknowledge financial support from industry members of the Cooling Technologies Research Center, an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.