Contents


Preface

Within a few hundred years of the Industrial Revolution, humans discovered or fabricated thousands of foam fluids and materials that have been utilized in petroleum extraction, chemical engineering, the textile and architecture industries, and more. In addition to synthesized foams, there are considerable foams found in nature that are very stable evolutionary and bionic structures. Foam structures have been widely studied and applied in many subjects, and scholars in the field have played an indelible role in developing foam-related theories that are being used to figure out how to make

Foams are ubiquitous in human life. For example, foams are found in sodas and sponges in liquid form and solid form, respectively. Various foams have distinctive properties that can be used to develop special usages in engineering applications. This book reviews, researches, and summarizes the knowledge and experience of foam fluids and porous foams in industry. Compared with simpler fluids, foam fluids are more complicated to describe by conventional rules because of their phase discontinuity. Considering that foam fluids can be applied to displace oil or gases underground, research on foam fluids is of great significance. Porous foams consist of solid metal and fluid-filled pores that take up a certain portion of the entire volume. This structural feature makes porous foams mechanically stable with lighter mass. In addition, porous foams have terrific performance when employed in energy absorption and heat exchange. Nevertheless, the pores existing in porous foams add the difficulties of modeling and calculating the fluid

flow. Fortunately, this book addresses this issue and provides possible solutions.

Chapter 1 reviews recent developments in the manufacture and characterization of multiphase foams developed by incorporating new phases into open-pore foam materials. The new incorporated phases can significantly alter the macro-/ microstructure of the starting materials or modify the pore surfaces to achieve new functionalities, which exhibits a great potential for use in electronics, medicine,

Chapter 2 discusses state-of-the-art acoustic and thermal models and their application to cellular foam materials. Five different forecasting methods including traditional analytical, a modified analytical with a new proposed equation, and inverse procedures were employed to determine the Johnson–Champoux–Allard (JCA) parameters related to the sound-absorbing properties of foam materials. Numerical results indicate that the inverse procedure, using the thermal characteristic length derived from the scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs as the imposed parameter, well agrees with the

Chapter 3 presents a turbulent heat transfer analysis of silicon carbide ceramic foam as a solar volumetric receiver. Both the Rosseland approximation and the P1 model are applied to consider the radiative heat transfer through the solar receiver. In light of the derived analytical solutions, it is found that the corresponding fluid and solid temperature variations generated under the Rosseland approximation agree fairly well with those based on the P1 model. Furthermore, optimal pore diameter that exists for achieving the maximum receiver efficiency under the equal pumping power is obtained, which provides effective guidance for a novel volumetric solar receiver design of silicon

better use of foams today.

or catalysis.

modified analytical model.

carbide ceramic foam.
