Assessing the influence of four bonding methods on the thermal contact resistance of open-cell aluminum foam

A thermal application of open-cell aluminum foam typically requires it to be bonded on a substrate. The resulting thermal contact resistance is investigated for four bonding methods. This is done by minimizing the difference between the calculated heat transfer via a zeroth order model and experimental data. The bonded metal foam, used to obtain the experimental data, are manufactured in-house. This allows varying pore size, porosity, aluminum alloy, foam height, air mass flow rate, air inlet temperature and bonding method. The latter is found to have an overwhelming impact. The resulting four thermal contact resistances are: 0.7 x 10(-3) m(2)K/W for brazing, 0.88 x 10(-3) m(2)K/W for co-casting, 1.25 x 10(-3) m(2)K/W for a single-epoxy bonding and 1.88 x 10(-3) m(2)K/W for a press-fit bonding. The uncertainty on these values is 11%. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.