The temperature distribution and heat transfer performance are
mainly affected by key factors, including solid thermal conductivity,
porosity, the pore density of metal foams, the Reynolds number;
and relative thermal conductivity. Based on the proposed
model, the influences of these factors on the dimensionless excess
temperature (hf and hs) distribution for the solid matrix and fluid in
the radius direction at the axial location of (L/2R1 = 200) are shown
in Figs. 6–10, respectively. In the parametric study, only one variable
is manipulated for the three values, while others are fixed as
default values.
Fig. 6 shows the influence of solid conductivity. With increases
in metal foam heat conductivity, the dimensionless solid temperature
is reduced, since higher heat conductivity leads to lower heat
conduction thermal resistance, thus creating more uniform temperature
distributions in the solid matrix, seen in Fig. 6a. On the
other hand, the dimensionless fluid temperature increases given
the same increase in conductivity, as shown in Fig. 6b. The temperature
difference between fluid and interface wall is improved and
heat transfer is correspondingly enhanced