Effect of pore morphology on cross-property link for close-celled metallic foams

We demonstrate a simple cross-property correlation between effective conductivity (both thermal and electrical) and effective elastic modulus for high porosity cellular metallic foams with non-spherical closed cells. A particular solution to the equation of Laplace heat conduction for modelling foam thermal conductivity is extended to account for non-spherical gaseous pores; and this model is further associated with the estimation of effective elastic modulus. The simple cross-property correlation thus obtained shows that both the effective conductivity and modulus significantly decrease with increasing porosity. Non-spherical pores contribute to further reduce the effective conductivity and modulus, due mainly to increased tortuosity and stress concentration caused by enlarged surface area and sharp corners as spherical pores are replaced by non-spherical ones.