Analysis of anisotropic behaviour of thermal conductivity in cellular metals

Anisotropy of the effective thermal conductivities of a cellular metal is considered with the metallic foam material M-pore® being used as a test case. Extensive finite element analyses are performed making use of computed tomography scans. To address the anisotropic behaviour of the material in detail, we develop a new two-dimensional analysis in each of the originally chosen coordinate planes. This allows the maximum and minimum thermal conductivities in the planes and for the bulk material to be fully determined.