Unveiling empirical correlation between electrical and thermal conductivities of medium porosity open-cell porous aluminium fabricated by replication casting method

In this work, the electrical and thermal conductivities of open-cell porous aluminium materials produced by replication casting method are investigated and the correlations between them studied. The four-point probe method was used to measure the electrical conductivity of the samples, while the C-therm analyser was used to experimentally determine the thermal conductivity of the cellular materials. The results show that both electrical and thermal conductivities of the porous samples increase as their relative density is increased. Comparison of the measured data with theoretical models shows that the scaling function with a dynamic exponent equal to 1.55 fits the experimental data for electrical conductivity. In addition, an empirical relationship was found to exist between measured electrical and thermal conductivities, while a modified Wiedemann-Franz law was also deduced to correlate the electrical and thermal conductivities of the porous aluminium materials.