Study on pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of sandwich structures with open-cell core

Abstract

In this paper, heat transfer characteristics and the pressure drop response of sandwich structures containing open-cell core were studied by using numerical simulation. The effect of micro-architecture and cell size of the unit cell on these characteristics were investigated by changing relative density of the models. In this paper, three types of open-cell were analyzed. There is a trade-off relationship between the heat transfer characteristics and the pressure drop response. These factors are the direction of thermal paths, surface area size and internal flow state. Also, these factors can be controlled without changing the relative density when the cell size is changed and the aspect ratio is equal. In order to clarify the characteristics of the open-cell, the open-cell were compared with two types of closed-cell as representative of other cores in terms of two dimensionless numbers (Nusselt number and friction factor). As a result, it was confirmed that the open-cell has high superiority in applications requiring light weight and high heat transfer characteristics.

Keywords

• heat exchanger
• cellular panel
• heat transfer
• pressure drop
• numerical analysis