Session: K12-02 Aerospace Heat Transfer II

Paper Number: 109586

109586 - 3d-Printable Gyroid Heat Exchangers 

    Heat Exchangers (HE) are devices which facilitate the transfer of heat between two or more fluid streams. These devices are ubiquitous in industry and operate in a myriad of flow settings. The optimal design and efficient operation of HE is an active and challenging field of research limited primarily by manufacturing possibilities.
    Recently, the emergence of Additive Manufacturing (AM), 3D-printing, has enabled the fabrication of complex three-dimensional geometries which were previously unfeasible. This allows the development of novel and efficient AM-HE with true freedom of design. Triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) are a promising target for AM-HE. TPMS are a family of mathematically described architectures which divide space into two interpenetrating volume domains. These complex geometries are only possible via 3d-printing.
    In this paper, we exploit the freedom of design enabled by 3d-printing to create novel AM-HE using TPMS architectures and evaluate their heat transfer and pressure drop performance using finite volume method for a range of Reynolds numbers. The thermal performance of TPMS-HE is found to far exceed that of traditional designs. The interconnected channels of the TPMS architecture demonstrated the unique ability to redistribute incoming flows across the HE-core, even in acute maldistributed flow scenarios, leading to more effective use of the design space. Finally, we showcase opportunities for further performance enhancement by geometric variation of TPMS architecture.

Presenting Author: Imran Qureshi Univeristy of Leeds