An experimental investigation on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of sintered woven wire mesh structures

The structure of sintered woven wire mesh is one of classical porous medium. Internal flow fluid and heat transfer characteristics of sintered metal wire mesh structures with various porosities were investigated experimentally. All the test pieces made of stainless steel wires with the same wire (d = 0.14 mm) were sintered after woven. In the experiments, the air which was applied by the gas source was used to investigate the performance of the structure. Pressures and flow rate at the inlet and outlet were obtained to get the permeability and inertia coefficient of each specimen as well as the friction factors. The Reynold numbers of the inlet changes from 3.22 to 24.98. At the same time, the sintered metal wire mesh structure was heated electrically depending on the electric residence of the wire. The wall temperature of the test pieces was measured using infrared camera. For the flow behavior, the results showed that the permeability increases with respect to porosity, while the inertia coefficient shows the opposite trend. Friction factor decreases as the Reynolds number increases. The results also showed that the porosity shows an insignificant impact on friction factors defined in this study. A new empirical equation of friction factors was proposed to predict the flow behavior of the sintered metal wire mesh structures. For the heat transfer characteristics, increase of Nusselt number has always been keeping pace with the Reynolds number. At the same time, porosity affects the Nusselt number.