Anisotropic Effective Thermal Conductivity Measurement of Various Kinds of Metal Fiber Materials

Recently, metal fiber materials were made by laminating metal fibers with a diameter of about 30 μ m to 300 μ m. Since the almost metal fibers were oriented in the horizontal direction (the major axis of the fiber), these metal fiber materials are estimated to be anisotropic with an effective thermal conductivity. However, there is little quantitative data on the anisotropic effective thermal conductivity of the various kinds of metal fiber materials. The purpose of this study is to investigate the anisotropic effective thermal conductivity of various metal fiber materials experimentally and theoretically. In order to measure the horizontal and vertical effective thermal conductivities of these metal fiber materials, new measurement devices were developed. As a result, it is found that the anisotropic effective thermal conductivity of the various metal fiber materials was confirmed, and the horizontal and vertical effective thermal conductivities of these metal fiber materials depend on the bulk density or porosity, Young’s modulus, the fiber length, and fiber diameter. And a dimensionless correlation equation for predicting the vertical and horizontal effective thermal conductivities of the various kinds of metal fiber materials was derived in terms of various dimensionless parameters.