Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Novel Porous Copper Fiber Sintered Sheet

In this work, a porous copper fiber sintered sheet (PCFSS) is fabricated by using a low-temperature solid-phase sintering method. Copper fiber is a raw material that is produced by a cutting method with a multi-tooth tool. A novel reference plate method (RPM) with a steady state heat transfer process is introduced to measure the thermal conductivity of PCFSS. The study involves experimentally investigating the effects of reference plate materials as well as the porosity and porosity gradients of PCFSS on thermal conductivity. The findings indicate that reasonable measurement results of thermal conductivity of PCFSS are obtained when 304 stainless steel is selected as a reference plate material when compared with that in the case of a red copper plate. The thermal conductivity increases with a decrease in the porosities of PCFSS in the approximate range of 70%–90%. With respect to the approximate measuring temperature range of 34°C~58°C, the thermal conductivities of PCFSSs with 70%, 80% and 90% porosities correspond to 25.35 W/(m·°C), 15.01 W/(m·°C) and 11.24 W/(m·°C), respectively. The thermal conductivity of PCFSS with 70%-80%-90% gradient porosity corresponds to 13.43 W/(m·°C), and this value is between 80% and 90% porosity of PCFSS.