Heat Transfer Enhancement from a Horizontal Cylinder Wrapped with a Porous Layer of Metal Foam: Experimental and Numerical Studies

This thesis presents experimental and numerical studies to investigate the heat transfer enhancement from a horizontal cylinder wrapped with metal foam layer in forced flow. Two configurations are investigated, whole and segmented metal foam layers of two different thicknesses but same porous material properties. For the experimental study, the metal foam configurations are tested at Reynolds number range of 7500 – 18000. Numerical CFD studies were conducted using ANSYS Fluent software and calibrated against the experimental data to provide a path for future numerical parametric analysis. The thermohydraulic characteristics of the metal foam configurations were obtained experimentally, along with an overall performance factor parameter. The segmented configuration at an optimum orientation angle proved to have the best overall performance of high heat transfer enhancement and lower pressure drop. The results of this thesis are of great value to many industries concerned with the thermohydraulic enhancement of heat transfer from tubes such as heat exchangers.