High Heat Flux Absorption Utilizing Porous Materials With Two-Phase Heat Transfer

Abstract

By combining two-phase heat transfer with forced convective flow through a porous material, a new heat transfer scheme emerges with the ability to absorb high heat fluxes without the corresponding temperature increase encountered in single-phase systems. In general, flow-through sintered metals are characterized by high thermal conductivity due to the metallic media, and a fluid flow which on the macro scale can be described as slug flow in nature. These same characteristics are exhibited by liquid metal flow cooling systems. To predict the heat transfer attributes of this two-phase flow process, a semi-analytical model was developed using the conservation equations of mass, momentum, and energy along with the apparent physical properties of the composite material. The results indicate that when a heat flux is applied to one side of the bounding surface and adiabatic conditions exist on the remaining sides, the surface temperature asymptotically approaches the same value regardless of the mass flow rate. In addition to the analytical results, definitions for the convection coefficient and Nusselt number for flow-through porous materials with phase change are presented.