Use of Graphite Foam as a Thermal Performance Enhancement of Heavy Hybrid Propulsion Systems. Final Report

摘要

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's graphite foam has the potential to be used as a heat exchanger for the Army's Future Combat System Manned Ground Vehicle and thus has the potential to improve its thermal performance. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program FLOW3D was used to develop a new CFD model for the graphite foam to be used in the development of a proper heat exchanger. The program was calibrated by first measuring the properties of the solid foams and determining the parameters to be used in the CFD model. Then the model was used to predict within 5% error the performance of finned foam heat sinks. In addition, the f factors and j factors commonly used to predict pressure drop and heat transfer were calculated for both the solid and finned structures. There was some evidence that corrugating the foams would yield higher j/f ratios than state of the art heat exchangers, confirming previously measured data. Because the results show that the CFD model was validated, it is recommended that the funding for Phases 2 through 5 be approved for the design of both the finned heat exchanger using tubes and round fin structures and the solid foam design using corrugated foams.