Correlations for the pressure drop for flow through metal foam

Steady-state unidirectional pressure-drop measurements for incompressible airflow through nine open-cell aluminum foam samples, having different porosities and pore densities, were undertaken. The pressure drop increased with increasing Darcian velocity following the quadratic Forchheimer equation. The lower-porosity foam produced significantly higher pressure drop. Both the permeability and the form drag coefficient correlated well with the porosity. The correlations predicted the results of some previous studies reasonably well, especially for the low-pore-density foam.