Open-cell porous metals for thermal management applications: fluid flow and heat transfer

Porous metals are produced by a wide range of industrially applied techniques, and the resulting porous structure is a characteristic of the manufacturing method chosen. This review firstly provides an overview of the different techniques to manufacture open-cell porous metals, highlighting the distinction between the resulting porous structures. The effects of the structural parameters on the fluid flow properties and heat transfer in porous metals are also discussed. It was evident from literature that there exist optimum structural parameters which offered maximum thermal exchange performance. Therefore, the last part of this review outlines the current research on porous metals for thermal management applications, which focuses on optimising the design of the porous metal structure to improve the heat transfer performance.