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The purpose of this paper is to provide a summarization and review of the present author's main investigations on failure modes of reticular metal foams under different loadings in engineering applications.

With the octahedral structure model proposed by the present authors themselves, the fundamentally mechanical relations have been systematically studied for reticular metal foams with open cells in their previous works. On this basis, such model theory is continually used to investigate the failure mode of this kind of porous materials under compression, bending, torsion and shearing, which are common loading forms in engineering applications.

The pore-strut of metal foams under different compressive loadings will fail in the tensile breaking mode when it is brittle. While it is ductile, it will tend to the shearing failure mode when the shearing strength is half or nearly half of the tensile strength for the corresponding dense material and to the tensile breaking mode when the shearing strength is higher than half of the tensile strength to a certain value. The failure modes of such porous materials under bending, torsional and shearing loads are also similarly related to their material species.

This paper presents a distinctive method to conveniently analyze and estimate the failure mode of metal foams under different loadings in engineering applications.

This paper aims to discuss about the two-dimensional numerical simulations of fluid flow and heat transfer through high thermal conductivity metal foams filled in a vertical channel using the commercial software ANSYS FLUENT.

The Darcy Extended Forchheirmer model is considered for the metal foam region to evaluate the flow characteristics and the local thermal non-equilibrium heat transfer model is considered for the heat transfer analysis; thus the resulting problem becomes conjugate heat transfer.

Results obtained based on the present simulations are validated with the experimental results available in literature and the agreement was found to be good. Parametric studies reveal that the Nusselt number increases in the presence of porous medium with increasing thickness but the effect because of the change in thermal conductivity was found to be insignificant. The results of heat transfer for the metal foams filled in the vertical channel are compared with the clear channel in terms of Colburn j factor and performance factor.

This paper serves as the current relevance in electronic cooling so as to open up more parametric and optimization studies to develop new class of materials for the enhancement of heat transfer.

The novelty of the present study is to quantify the effect of metal foam thermal conductivity and thickness on the performance of heat transfer and hydrodynamics of the vertical channel for an inlet velocity range of 0.03-3 m/s.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce different methods for measuring the porosity of metal foams, and especially present a new method for conveniently measuring the open porosity that has a stronger impact on a number of physical properties of the porous product.

Metal foam is a kind of material that utilizes the function of pores inside the porous body. For such materials, the porosity is an important factor or even a key factor to determine a number of the practical parameters, such as the conductivity, acoustic properties and mechanical performances. Especially, the open porosity has a stronger impact on the sound absorption, electromagnetic shielding, heat transfer of the porous product, as well as the performances of using the internal pore surface. Therefore, it would be meaningful to find the simple and convenient to well measure the open porosity of metal foams.

In the present new method, the open porosity can be obtained directly by different volume parameters of the porous sample, while it can only by some weight indexes of the porous sample in other measuring methods.

The characteristic of this new method makes the measurement simpler and more convenient in this new method than in the other methods.

The samples of nickel foam with porosity of about 88 percent were uniaxially tensioned at room temperature, and the phenomena of tensile fracture were compared with that from the fully dense plate of metal nickel. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between their behaviors of tensile fracture.

The tensile test was carried out by using the tester of CMT-series microcomputer-controlled electronic universal testing machine. The difference of tensile fracture behavior between the nickel foam and the dense metal nickel was discussed by analyzing the load-displacement curve and the microscopical fracture.

The results indicated that, nickel foam also displayed the feature of macroscopic plastic-deformation during tension, but it showed a macroscopic brittleness much more than that of the fully dense body. The axial apparent strain at the maximum load for the foamed sample was markedly less than that for the dense one. In addition, an obviously gradual course exhibited for the foamed body during tensile failure and a rapidly instant course for the dense body correspondingly.

There have been some studies on the tensile behavior for metal foams, but much less than on the compression, and the relevant works are mostly for aluminum foam. The present work provides the investigations on the difference of tensile fracture behavior between the nickel foam and the dense metal nickel, as well as that of the corresponding samples in various cases with different tensile velocities. It is found that the porosity can make a remarkable decrease of the apparent strain at the maximum load and a significant increase of the macroscopical brittleness for the metallic nickel under tension.

This paper aims to investigate melting heat transfer of a non-Newtonian phase change material (PCM) in a cylindrical enclosure-space between two tubes using a deformed mesh method.

Metal foam porous layers support the inner and outer walls of the enclosure. The porous layers and clear space of the enclosure are filled with PCM. The natural convection effects during the phase change are taken into account, and the governing equations for the molten region and solid region of the enclosure are introduced. The governing equations are transformed into non-dimensional form and then solved using finite element method. The results are compared with the literary works and found in good agreement. The non-Newtonian effects on the phase change heat transfer and melting front are studied.

The results show that the increase of non-Newtonian effects (the decrease of the power-law index) enhances the heat melting process in the cavity at the moderate times of phase change heat transfer. The temperature gradients in porous metal foam over the hot wall are small, and hence, the porous layer notably increases the melting rate. When the melting front reaches the cold porous layer, strong non-linear behaviors of the melting front can be observed.

The phase change heat transfer of non-Newtonian fluid in a cylindrical enclosure partially filled with metal foams is addressed for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is mainly to know: (1) the sound absorption coefficient of porous composite structures constituted by a new kind of lightweight ceramic foam and perforated plate; (2) the availability of an equivalent porous material model, recently proposed by the present author, to these composite structures in sound absorption.

A kind of lightweight ceramic foam with bulk density of 0.38–0.56 g·cm-3 was produced by means of molding, drying and sintering. The effect of stainless steel perforated plate on sound absorption performance of the ceramic foam was investigated by means of JTZB absorption tester.

The results indicate that the sound absorption performance could be obviously changed by adding the stainless steel perforated plate in front of the porous samples and the air gap in back of the porous samples. Adding the perforated plate to the porous sample with a relatively large pore size, the sound absorption performance could be evidently improved for the composite structure. When the air gap is added to the composite structure, the first absorption peak shifts to the lower frequency, and the sound absorption coefficient could increase in the low frequency range.

Based on the equivalent porous material model and the “perforated plate with air gap” model, the sound absorption performance of the composite structures can be simulated conveniently to a great extent by using Johnson-Champoux-Allard model.

This study aims to introduce a metal porous burner design. Literature is surveyed in a comprehensive manner to relate the current design with ongoing research. A demonstrative computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is presented with projected flow conditions by means of a common commercial CFD code and turbulence model to show the flow-related features of the proposed burner. The porous metal burner has a novel design, and it is not commercially available.

Based on the field experience about porous burners, a metal, cylindrical, two-staged, homogenous porous burner was designed. Literature was surveyed to lay out research aspects for the porous burners and porous media. Three dimensional solid computer model of the burner was created. The flow domain was extracted from the solid model to use in CFD analysis. A commercial computational fluid dynamics code was utilized to analyze the flow domain. Projected flow conditions for the burner were applied to the CFD code. Results were evaluated in terms of homogenous flow distribution at the outer surface and flow mixing. Quantitative results are gathered and are presented in the present report by means of contour maps.

There aren’t any flow sourced anomalies in the flow domain which would cause an inefficient combustion for the application. An accumulation of gas is evident around the top flange of the burner leading to higher static pressure. Generally, very low pressure drop throughout the proposed burner geometry is found which is regarded as an advantage for burners. About 0.63 Pa static pressure increase is realized on the flange surface due to the accumulation of the gas. The passage between inner and outer volumes has a high impact on the total pressure and leads to about 0.5 Pa pressure drop. About 0.03 J/kg turbulent kinetic energy can be viewed as the highest amount. Together with the increase in total enthalpy, total amount of energy drawn from the flow is 0.05 J/kg. More than half of it spent through turbulence and remaining is dissipated as heat. Outflow from burner surface can be regarded homogenous though the top part has slightly higher outflow. This can be changed by gradually increasing pore sizes toward inlet direction.

Combustion via a porous medium is a complex phenomenon since it involves multiple phases, combustion chemistry, complex pore geometries and fast transient responses. Therefore, experimentation is used mostly. To do a precise computational analysis, strong computational power, parallelizing, elaborate solid modeling, very fine meshes and small time steps and multiple models are required.

Findings in the present work imply that a homogenous gas outflow can be attained through the burner surfaces while very small pressure drop occurs leading to less pumping power requirement which is regarded as an advantage. Flow mixing is realizable since turbulent kinetic energy is distinguished at the interface surface between inner and outer volumes. The porous metal matrix burner offers fluid mixing and therefore better combustion efficiency. The proposed dimensions are found appropriate for real-world application.

Conducted analysis is for a novel burner design. There are opportunities both for scientific and commercial fields.

With the nickel foam made by the technique of electrodeposition on polymer foam, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of several deferent processes on the surface morphology and the specific surface area of this porous product.

The surface morphologies of the nickel foam were examined by SEM. The specific surface area of the porous product was measured by gas (N₂) permeability method and also calculated by the reported formula.

The nickel foam from sintering in NH₃ decomposition atmosphere at 850°C will achieve the same specific surface area as that at 980°C, whether this porous structure after electrodeposition comes through direct sintering in NH₃ decomposition atmosphere, or through burning in air at 600°C for 4 min beforehand then the same reductive sintering.

There have been some studies on the preparation and application of nickel foam, but few works focus on the processing influence on the specific surface of this porous product. The present work provides the investigations on the difference of the product made under different producing conditions, and the influence of several deferent processes on the specific surface area of the product.

Efficient thermal management of central processing unit (CPU) cooling systems is vital in the context of advancing information technology and the demand for enhanced data processing speeds. This study aims to explore the thermal performance of a CPU cooling setup using a cylindrical porous metal foam heat sink.

Nanofluid flow through the metal foam is simulated using the Darcy–Brinkman–Forschheimer equation, accounting for magnetic field effects. The temperature distribution is modeled through the local thermal equilibrium equation, considering viscous dissipation. The problem’s governing partial differential equations are solved using the similarity method. The CPU’s hot surface serves as a solid wall, with nanofluid entering the heat sink as an impinging jet. Verification of the numerical results involves comparison with existing research, demonstrating strong agreement across numerical, analytical and experimental findings. Ansys Fluent® software is used to assess temperature, velocity and streamlines, yielding satisfactory results from an engineering standpoint.

Investigating critical parameters such as Darcy number (10⁻⁴ ≤ Da_D ≤ 10⁻²), aspect ratio (0.5 ≤ H/D ≤ 1.5), Reynolds number (5 ≤ Re_D,bf ≤ 3500), Eckert number (0 ≤ EC_bf ≤ 0.1) , porosity (0.85 ≤ ε ≤ 0.95), Hartmann number (0 ≤ Ha_D,bf ≤ 300) and the volume fraction of nanofluid (0 ≤ φ ≤ 0.1) reveals their impact on fluid flow and heat sink performance. Notably, Nusselt number will reduce 45%, rise 19.2%, decrease 14.1%, and decrease 0.15% for Reynolds numbers of 600, with rising porosity from 0.85 to 0.95, Darcy numbers from 10⁻⁴ to 10⁻², Eckert numbers from 0 to 0.1, and Hartman numbers from 0 to 300.

Despite notable progress in studying thermal management in CPU cooling systems using porous media and nanofluids, there are still significant gaps in the existing literature. First, few studies have considered the Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer equation, which accounts for non-Darcy effects and the flow and geometric interactions between coolant and porous medium. The influence of viscous dissipation on heat transfer in this specific geometry has also been largely overlooked. Additionally, while nanofluids and impinging jets have demonstrated potential in enhancing thermal performance, their utilization within porous media remains underexplored. Furthermore, the unique thermal and structural characteristics of porous media, along with the incorporation of a magnetic field, have not been fully investigated in this particular configuration. Consequently, this study aims to address these literature gaps and introduce novel advancements in analytical modeling, non-Darcy flow, viscous dissipation, nanofluid utilization, impinging jets, porous media characteristics and the impact of a magnetic field. These contributions hold promising prospects for improving CPU cooling system thermal management and have broader implications across various applications in the field.

A combination of highly conductive porous media and nanofluids is an efficient way for improving thermal performance of relevant applications. For precisely predicting the flow and thermal transport of nanofluids in porous media, the purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-phase coupling numerical methods.

Based on the lattice Boltzmann (LB) method, this study combines the convective flow, non-equilibrium thermal transport and phase interactions of nanofluids in porous matrix and proposes a new multi-phase LB model. The micro-scale momentum and heat interactions are especially analyzed for nanoparticles, base fluid and solid matrix. A set of three-phase LB equations for the flow/thermal coupling of base fluid, nanoparticles and solid matrix is established.

Distributions of nanoparticles, velocities for nanoparticles and the base fluid, temperatures for three phases and interaction forces are analyzed in detail. Influences of parameters on the nanofluid convection in the porous matrix are examined. Thermal resistance of nanofluid convective transport in porous structures are comprehensively discussed with the models of multi-phases. Results show that the Rayleigh number and the Darcy number have significant influences on the convective characteristics. The result with the three-phase model is mildly larger than that with the local thermal non-equilibrium model.

This paper first creates the multi-phase theoretical model for the complex coupling process of nanofluids in porous structures, which is useful for researchers and technicians in fields of thermal science and computational fluid dynamics.