Study on the Thermal Performance of Heat Exchanger with Using Metallic Foam

Since metallic foam will increase the performance of heat exchanger, it has caused many researchers’ attention recently. Our research based on the model that metallic foams applied to heat exchanger. In this case, there is three kinds of heat transfer mechanisms, heat conduction in fibres, heat transfer by conduction in fluid phase, and internal heat change between solid and fluid phases. In this paper we study both the hydraulic and thermal aspect performance. Pressure drop along airflow direction will be presented. As thermal aspect, we first discuss the acceptance of applying thermal equilibrium among the two phases, then to calculate the dimensionless temperature profile, the heat transfer coefficient and Nu number in 7Aluminum foams.