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Correlations for the pressure drop for flow through metal foam

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Abstract

Steady-state unidirectional pressure-drop measurements for incompressible airflow through nine open-cell aluminum foam samples, having different porosities and pore densities, were undertaken. The pressure drop increased with increasing Darcian velocity following the quadratic Forchheimer equation. The lower-porosity foam produced significantly higher pressure drop. Both the permeability and the form drag coefficient correlated well with the porosity. The correlations predicted the results of some previous studies reasonably well, especially for the low-pore-density foam.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the ERC Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-9731677 with the help of Dr. Miguel Vélez and Dr. Elaine Scott, for which the author is vary thankful. My former student Pablo D. Quiñones-Ramos has been instrumental in providing me with all the references I needed for completing this paper, for which I am deeply grateful.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Detroit Mercy, 4001 W. McNichols Rd., Detroit, MI, 48221, USA

    N. Dukhan

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  1. N. Dukhan
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Dukhan, N. Correlations for the pressure drop for flow through metal foam. Exp Fluids 41, 665–672 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-006-0194-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-006-0194-x

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