Pressure Drop Measurements for Air Flow Through Open-Cell Aluminum Foam
Wind-tunnel pressure drop measurements for airflow through two samples of forty-pore-per-inch commercially available open-cell aluminum foam were undertaken. Each sample’s cross-sectional area perpendicular to the flow direction measured 10.16 cm by 24.13 cm. The thickness in the flow direction was 10.16 cm for one sample and 5.08 cm for the other. The flow rate ranged from 0.016 to 0.101 m3/s for the thick sample and from 0.025 to 0.134 m3/s for the other. The data were all in the fully turbulent regime. The pressure drop for both samples increased with increasing flow rate and followed a quadratic behavior. The permeability and the inertia coefficient showed some scatter with average values of 4.6 × 10−8 m2 and 2.9 × 10−8 m2, and 0.086 and 0.066 for the thick and the thin samples, respectively. The friction factor decayed with the Reynolds number and was weakly dependent on the Reynolds number for Reynolds number greater than 35.