The effective thermal conductivity of three-dimensional reticulated foam materials

In this paper, the effective thermal conductivity keff of three-dimensional (3D) reticulated SiC foams were investigated through experimental and numerical methods. The results showed that the keff of SiC foams increases as the volume fraction f increases from 30% to 50%. However, there are no systematic changes detected in keff when the cell size of the foam varies at a fixed volume fraction. The keff of SiC foams as a function of f was obtained. Compared the experimental results with the calculated ones, it indicated that the outcome can be widely applied in estimating the effective thermal conductivity of other foam materials.