Numerical analyses of the thermal conductivity of random hollow sphere structures

This paper presents Lattice Monte Carlo (LMC) and Finite Element (FE) analyses on the effective thermal conductivity of sintered Metallic Hollow Spheres Structures (MHSS). A novel analysis technique applying LMC permits the utilisation of large high resolution models and can be based on Computed Tomography (CT) images. As a consequence, simulations are performed using the real geometry and no simplifications, such as the use of model structures, need to be introduced. In the first part, the influence of the micro-porosity on the effective thermal conductivity of the cell wall material is determined. Using these results, the second part of the analyses directly addresses the thermal properties of sintered MHSS. The findings of the LMC analyses are compared with FE results.