Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Sintered Metallic Fiber Structures

Sintered metal fiber structures show a favourable ratio between pressure drop and inner surface area. Their exclusively open-cell morphology makes them well suited for heat transfer or temporary heat storage applications. Recently, highly conductive sintered metal fiber structures were successfully prepared from melt extracted aluminum alloy fibers. The heat conduction and fluid flow properties of metallic sintered short fiber structures were determined experimentally and compared with simple analytical models. It was found that equations taken from the available literature yield good approximations to the experimental results.