The effective thermal conductivity of monolith honeycomb structures

Recent advances in computational hardware and software have made it much easier to solve complex conduction problems numerically. In this work, a numerical investigation was performed to study the effective thermal conductivity as a function of monolith structure, washcoat presence and physical and geometrical properties. Both solid and fluid were spatially discretized and the resulting heat flux analyzed. The results are compared to those predicted using the electrical network analogy considering the monolith cell as a combination of series and parallel resistances. It is found that the analogy is not exact, and that a model based on a parallel resistance combination usually gave better results. The best value can be obtained by modelling the heat flow through a two dimensional web, which is not computationally expensive.