Metal Foam Heat Exchanger Design Optimization for Improved Thermal-Hydraulic Performance under Dry Operating Conditions

Open cell metal foams have received attention for utilization in thermal applications including electronics cooling and HVAC&R.  Despite manufacturing and cost-related issues, such novel materials hold promise due to better heat transfer compared with conventional fin designs.  However, one of the major issues is their higher air-side pressure drop. Four types of aluminum foam heat exchangers with different pore sizes have been built and tested under dry conditions for this study. The data have been reduced to correlate the foam geometry to air-side heat transfer and pressure drop.  These correlations were used to optimize the foam geometry for thermal-hydraulic performance.