The accurate thermal conductivity of fouling plays a very significant role in
designing heat exchanger. In this paper, a novel method of calculating the
effective thermal conductivity (ETC) of particulate fouling is put forward
by using Image-Pro-Plus image processing, the finite element method and
ANSYS parametric design language (APDL). First of all, according to the
analysis on the particulate fouling samples features, the particulate
fouling is considered as porous media with fractal characteristics, whose
microscopic network model is established using the finite element method,
and each unit body material properties are randomly assigned by APDL.
Secondly, ETC of particulate fouling model is calculated by the steady state
plate method. And then, the influence of particulate fouling microstructure
on ETC is explored. Last, it is also show that the calculation resulting of
ETC agrees well with available experimental data and empirical correlation.
Moreover, it has been shown that ETC of particulate fouling is closely
associated with the porosity and pore size. The method can be used to
research on the thermal conductivity of fouling, discuss the influence of
microstructure on ETC of fouling, and provide the guidelines for designing
of heat exchanger on calculating accurate thermal conductivity of fouling.
Micro-scale prediction of effective thermal conductivity of CNT/Al composites by finite element method
