Numerical Simulation of Active Cooling Using Porous Metals



Avalos Gauna, E ORCID: 0000-0002-3774-8966
(2018) Numerical Simulation of Active Cooling Using Porous Metals. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

[img] Text
200975441_Sep2017.pdf - Unspecified

Download (12MB)

Abstract

Porous metals have low densities and novel physical, mechanical, thermal, electrical and acoustic properties. Hence, they have attracted a large amount of interest over the last few decades. A great number of analytical and experimental works have been carried out to provide qualitatively and quantitatively macroscopic descriptions of the different properties among these novel types of materials. In the case of open-celled porous metals, one of their possible applications is for thermal management in the electronics industry, because of their fluid permeability and thermal conductivity. Particularly, porous copper produced by the Lost Carbonate Sintering (LCS) process is an excellent candidate for this purpose. The heat transfer capability is achieved by the interaction between the internal channels within the porous metal and the coolant flowing throw them. All the research made on the LCS porous copper was to properly characterize this material. All the data available is experimentally obtained. Only few studies were made in how to improve the heat transfer performance of the material. Therefore, this thesis studies the fluid flow and heat transfer in open-cell porous metals manufactured by space holder methods such as the LCS porous copper. This was achieved by numerical simulation using software ANSYS-Fluent. A 3D geometric model of the porous structure was created based on the face-centred-cubic arrangement of spheres linked by cylinders. This model allows for different combinations of pore parameters including a wide range of porosity (50-80%), pores size (200-1500 µm) and metal particle sizes (10-75 µm). In this study, water was used as the coolant and copper was selected as the metal matrix. The flow rate was varied in the Darcian and Forchheimer’s regimes. The permeability, form drag coefficient and heat transfer coefficient were calculated under a range of conditions. The numerical results showed that permeability increased whereas the form drag coefficient decreased with porosity. Both permeability and form drag coefficient increased with pore size. Increasing flow rate and decreasing porosity led to better heat transfer performance.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Divisions: Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 20 Aug 2018 09:17
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 06:38
DOI: 10.17638/03018623
Supervisors:
  • Zhao, Yuyuan
  • Dennis, David
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3018623