Material and height effects on the heat transfer performance of metal foams cooled by air in forced convection

In this paper, copper and aluminum foams with different porosity, number of pores per inch (PPI) and foam core height, are experimentally studied during air forced convection. The experimental measurements permit to understand how each parameter (i.e. porosity, PPI, material, and foam thickness) affects the heat transfer and fluid flow behavior of the metal foams. The paper presents the experimental heat transfer coefficients, permeability and inertia coefficients; moreover, it reports the normalized mean wall temperature as a function of the pumping power per unit of heat transfer area: two meaningful parameters that allow quantitative comparisons of different enhanced surfaces, which can be considered suitable for electronic thermal management.