Experimental investigation on pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of copper metal foam heat sink

The effect of the cooling performance of a copper metal foam heat sink under buoyancy-induced convection is investigated in this work. Experiments are conducted on copper metal foam of 61.3% porosity with 20 pores per inch. The pressure drop experiment is carried out to find the permeability and foam coefficient of the porous media. It is found that the property of porous media changes by changing the angle of inclination of the porous media from a horizontal to a vertical position while keeping the orientation and porosity the same. The Hazen-Dupuit Darcy model is used to curve-fit the longitudinal global pressure drop versus the average fluid speed data from an isothermal steady-flow experiment across the test section of the porous medium. The study concludes that the permeability and foam coefficient for copper foam is found to be 1.11 10-7 m2 and 79.9 m-1, respectively. The heat transfer study shows that the thermal performance of copper metal foam is 35-40% higher than the conventional aluminum metal heat sink under an actual conventional mode.