The effective thermal conductivities of porous materials are calculate
d with a finite element method by the fundamental equation of heat con
duction in porous materials in the case of void fraction, pore shapes
and thermal conductivity ratio of two phases. Effective thermal conduc
tivities in the porous materials with spherical pores are larger than
those with cylindrical and parallelepipedic pores, and agree closely w
ith the Maxwell-Eucken equation. Since effective thermal conductivitie
s in the case of cylindrical and parallelepipedic pores are almost the
same, a correlative equation is obtained by using the numerical resul
ts for these pore shapes. To check these calculated results, the tempe
rature distributions and effective thermal conductivities were measure
d experimentally under the same operating conditions as those of the t
heoretical analysis.