Combined Conductive and Radiative Heat Transfer through Open-Celllar Porous Plates

The ability of the cubic lattice model for the thermal and radiative properties of open-cellular porous materials in predicting the combined effect of conduction and radiation in plane-parallel, open-cellular porous plates was investigated in comparison with available experimental data. The validities of the P_1 approximation to radiative transfer and the simple adding method for the total heat flux were also addressed. It is concluded that the cubic lattice model can be utilized accurately to evaluate the temperature porfiles and heat transfer characteristics in open-cellular porous plates and that the simple adding method gives the fairly accurate total heat flux across the media. In addition, it is found that there exists only a little discrepancy between the results for the temperature profiles and mean total effective thermal conductivities obtained by the P_1 approximation and those obtained by the exact numerical method.