Application of high porosity metal foams as air-cooled heat exchangers to high heat load removal systems

A numerical study has been conducted to investigate the fluid flow and heat transfer of an air-cooled metal foam heat exchanger under the high speed laminar jet confined by two parallel walls for which the range of the Reynolds number is 600-1000. Two independent numerical solvers were used and cross-validated being a FORTRAN code and the commercially available software CFD-ACE. The effects of local thermal non-equilibrium, thermal dispersion, porosity, and pore density on the heat transfer augmentation are examined for different Reynolds numbers. Application of energy flux vectors, for convection visualization, is also illustrated for a more comprehensive analysis of the problem. Finally, the performance of the metal foam heat exchanger is compared to that of conventional finned design. It is observed that the heat removal rate can be greatly improved at almost no excess cost

Comments on “Flow, thermal, and entropy generation characteristics inside a porous channel with viscous dissipation” by S. Mahmud and R.A. Fraser [Int. J. Thermal Sciences 44 (2005) 21–32]

Hoomen, Merrikh and Ejlali presents comment on the paper on 'Flow, thermal, and entropy generation characteristics inside a porous channel with viscous dissipation' by S. Mahmud and R.A. Fraser. The paper presents closed form solutions to the velocity and temperature distributions that would be very useful for checking numerical computations. The authors have applied the fluid thermal conductivity kf in all of the equations, that should be replaced by the effective thermal conductivity. They have presented the temperature distribution and the Nusselt number as a function of the Darcy number only, inspite of the fact that Re, Pr, and Ec will affect the temperature profile. The authors have applied a clear-fluid compatible term in the entropy production term that has not been already considered in the thermal energy equation. The reliability of the numerical results is questionable though the authors have applied a previously tested numerical scheme

Second law analysis of laminar flow in a channel filled with saturated porous media: a numerical solution

Abstract: This paper investigates entropy generation due to forced convection in a porous medium sandwiched between two parallel plates one of them being subjected to a uniform heat flux and the other one insulated. Our results showed that viscous dissipation will affect the entropy generation rate at the centerline of the channel since viscous dissipation is a quadratic function of velocity [1-3]. Neglecting the Darcy dissipation term in comparison with the terms added by Al-Hadrami et al. [4], will lead to the misunderstanding that fluid friction has no effect on the entropy generation rate at the tube centerline where the velocity derivative vanishes due to symmetry. Though the term added by [4] is O(Da) compared to the Darcy term one should not drop it unless the clear flow solution is sought [5-7]. Moreover, as stated by Nield [1], one should not use just the term involving velocity derivatives, as some authors have done in the past, for example [8-11]. Though in this paper the viscous dissipation effects in the energy equation are neglected, we have take them into account when it came to the entropy generation analysis

Effects of porosity changes on the self-heating characteristics of coal stockpiles

The oxidation process occurring in a coal stockpile is a serious economic and safety problem. In this research, heat and fluid flow within and around a heat generating porous material (coal stockpile) are numerically investigated by both a FORTRAN code and the commercially available software CFD-ACE for a self-heating medium. Transient variation of the maximum temperature inside the coal stockpile, as the main parameter to study self-heating and spontaneous self-ignition is monitored and a threshold is presented. It is shown that the maximum temperature inside the pile may reduce/increase depending on the stockpile average porosity and permeability

Effects of viscous dissipation on thermally developing forced convection in a porous saturated circular tube with an isoflux wall

The viscous dissipation effect on forced convection in a porous saturated circular tube with an isoflux wall is investigated on the basis of the Brinkman flow model. For the thermally developing region, a numerical study is reported while a perturbation analysis is presented to find expressions for the temperature profile and the Nusselt number for the fully developed region. The fully developed Nusselt number found by numerical solution for the developing region is compared with that of asymptotic analysis and a good degree of agreement is observed

Introduction of the structure, modeling and analysis of junctionless heterostructure Si/Si1-xGex transistor

In Junctionless transistors, the source-channel-drain doping is of the same type and level, hence, the process of making Junctionless transistors is easier than inverting mode transistor. Despite this benefit, reducing the transconductance of Junctionless transistors due to reduced carrier velocity makes the operation of this type of transistor difficult for analog, radio frequency and high frequency noise usages. An effective method that increases the trans-conductance of Junctionless transistors without reducing efficiency is using a heterogeneous structure in the channel. In the present article, using Si and Si1-xGex materials in the channel is proposed and modeled so as to enhance the transconductance of Junctionless transistor. The special structure of the proposed transistor, called JL-Si / Si1-xGex, eliminates the intervalley scattering between valleys of ∆2 and ∆4. This increases the velocity of the electron and consequently enhances the transconductance. The outcomes of the modelling of the proposed JL-Si / Si1-xGex heterostructure transistor indicate the maximum transconductance of 2.5 mS / um, which increases 50% compared to similar silicon transistor. Moreover, calculations which are extracted from modelling demonstrate that the proposed JL-Si / Si1-xGex transistor has a unity gain cutoff frequency of 750 GHz, minimum noise figure of 65.0 dB, and an available gain of 28.5 dB. The parameters of cut-off frequency, minimum noise figure and available gain of the proposed JL-Si / Si1-xGex transistor have been improved by 34%, 62.5% and 53%, respectively, compared to the JL-Si transistor with similar dimensions. The proposed device can be suitable candidate for RFIC applications