Pore scale analysis for flow and thermal characteristics in metallic woven mesh

Metallic woven mesh screens are representative porous media with periodic structures, which have great application prospects in emerging technology and industrial equipment. However, the effect of their pore structure on macroscopic properties is not clear, which limits their large-scale engineering application. In this paper, to investigate the influence mechanism of stacking patterns and wire contact conditions on flow and heat conduction from the pore scale, a representative elementary volume model of the square-shaped plain copper micromesh was reconstructed according to the geometric parameters obtained by the optical microscope and porosity test experiment. Furthermore, based on the understanding of microscopic mechanism, the theoretical calculation model for macroscopic characteristics was proposed. The results show that the flow characteristics in meshes are mainly affected by stacked patterns. When ReK is 0.08 and 0.28, the flow in single layer and staggered stacked woven meshes transitions from Darcy flow to Forchheimer flow. In Forchheimer flow regime, neglecting the inertia force causes a maximum 50 % error for permeability calculation. The permeability empirical correlations for Darcy and Forchheimer flow are proposed according to Kozeny-Carman and Kozeny-like model. The zdirection effective thermal conductivity of copper woven meshes is significantly affected by wire contact conditions, the maximum value is from 2.5 to 13.5 W/(m & sdot;K). The z-direction effective thermal conductivity of tangent and gap contact conditions can be described by the ZBS model, while the random model is suitable for that of overlapped contact conditions. The x-direction thermal conductivity is little affected by contact conditions, the maximum value is 50.3 W/(m & sdot;K), but the tortuosity effect of copper wires should be considered for calculation. The calculation model of anisotropic thermal conductivity for single-layer woven meshes is established according to Kirchhoff's law, which is also extended to the staggered stacked woven meshes by introducing a compactness factor.