Thermal characterization of porous carbon foam—convection in parallel flow

Experiments are presented to quantify the convective heat transfer that is obtained by passing parallel airflow over a layer of porous carbon foam bonded onto a solid substrate. The increase in heat transfer is shown to be inversely proportional to Reynolds number and decreased from about 28–10% over the Reynolds number range 150,000–500,000. The heat transfer is independent of the effective conductivity over the range of conditions tested herein, and is independent of thickness for carbon-foam layers of thickness greater than 3 mm.