An Accurate Experimental Determination of Interstitial Heat Transfer Coefficients of Ceramic Foams Using the Single Blow Method

An exhaustive experimental investigation has been carried out for accurate determination of interstitial heat transfer coefficients of ceramic foams in forced convective flows. The single-blow method was used, in which, the fluid temperature varies with time and convective heat transfer becomes time-dependent. The method results in a transient and conjugate heat transfer phenomena between the foam and fluid. These transient temperature data are then compared with the theoretical results to obtain the corresponding interstitial heat transfer coefficients between the fluid and foam solid surface. The interstitial coefficients thus determined are compared against available sets of experimental data, so as to ex- amine the consistency among the reported experimental data.