Numerical simulation of sintered perforated hollow sphere structures (PHSS) to investigate thermal conductivity

Abstract

This paper investigates the thermal properties of a new type of hollow sphere structures. For this new type, the sphere shell is perforated by several holes in order to open the inner sphere volume and surface. The effective thermal conductivity of perforated sphere structures in several kinds of arrangements is numerically evaluated for different hole diameters. The results are compared to classical configurations without perforation. In the scope of this study, three-dimensional finite element analysis is used in order to investigate simple cubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic and hexagonal unit cell models. A linear behavior was found for the heat conductivity of different hole diameters for several kinds of arrangements when the results are plotted over the average density.