Experiment and numerical simulation on transient heat transfer from SiC foam to airflow in a high temperature tube

Abstract

In order to understand the high temperature heat transfer behavior of ceramic foam to air-flow, experiment and numerical simulation have been conducted for a tube fully filled with SiC foam under several air-flow velocities. The tested sample of SiC foam is characterized by a porosity of 0.88 and 10 pores per inch, which is heated to 1000?C before the air-flow passes through. The transient temperature variation is recorded and discussed for several inlet air-flow velocities ( 2.9 m/s, 4.3 m/s and 5.8 m/s). Then, a computational model for the transient process is developed to nu- merically investigate the coupled radiative and convective heat transfer, and compared with the experimental data. The results show that the heat transfer reaches steady-state quickly and the time needed is less than 80 second. The transient devia- tion between the predicted and experimental data is less than 25.0%. Besides, it is found that there exists an obvious temperature difference between the fluid and solid phases, the maximum difference occurs at the neighbor region of tube wall and decreases as the inlet velocity increases at the steady-state.