PNNL

Abstract

The effects of the surface area density of open-cell aluminum foams on the effective thermal conductivity of aluminum foam-phase change material (PCM) composites were investigated. Paraffin was selected as the PCM. The experimental results show that the effective thermal conductivity increases as the temperature increases. The experimental results suggest that the effective thermal conductivities can be different for different surface area densities of foams even though the relative densities of foams are similar. Therefore, for an accurate estimation of the effective thermal conductivity, a correlation including the surface area density effect is needed.