Novel Lightweight Metal Foam Heat Exchangers

An overview of open cell metal foam materials with application to advanced heat exchange devices is presented. The metal foam materials considered consist of interconnected cells in a random orientation. Metal foam materials, manufacture and fabrication into complex heat exchange components are described. Experiments with flat foam panels brazed to copper sheets shows increasing heat removal effectiveness with decreasing product pore size at equivalent coolant flow rates. However, the high-pressure drop associated with flow through small pore-size material makes the use of larger pore size material more attractive.