Design complexity and performance analysis in additively manufactured heat exchangers
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Design complexity and performance analysis in additively manufactured heat exchangers Marwan Alsulami 1,2 & Mehdi Mortazavi 3 & Seyed A. Niknam 1
&
Dongsheng Li 4
Received: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 9 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The main objective of this research is to investigate the tradeoffs between design complexity and thermal performance in additively manufactured metallic heat exchangers. Such heat exchangers have become a favorite topic for investigation in various fields ranging from air conditioning to aircraft gas turbine engines. In particular, high manufacturing cost has emerged as the major drawback in broad applications of manifold-microchannel heat exchanger (MMHXs). The possibility of cost-effective manufacturing has generated wide interest in applying additive manufacturing (AM) for fabricating MMHXs. Furthermore, AM technologies will provide an opportunity for enhanced design and superior heat transfer performance. In this study, innovative MMHXs are designed and fabricated through selective laser melting. An experimental setup was designed to measure pressure drop and heat transfer for the developed MMHXs with a wide range of Reynolds numbers. The coefficient of performance was calculated based on the heat flow rate, air pressure drop, and air flow rate. Measurement results demonstrated that in some scenarios adding more internal features, i.e., increasing design complexity, does not necessarily improve the MMHX performance. Keywords Heat exchanger . Manifold microchannel . Selective laser melting
1 Introduction Heat exchangers (HXs) are key engineering components with a broad range of applications, including balance of plant, which have made them a great candidate for design improvement using additive manufacturing (AM) [1, 2]. The redesigning efforts aim to achieve more efficient HXs via maximizing the ratio of heat transfer to pressure drop and in certain case reducing the volume and decreasing weight [3]. The published literature in recent years contains several novel examples of HX designs facilitated by AM. In effect, AM has unleashed a great opportunity to overcome the traditional
* Seyed A. Niknam [email protected] 1
Department of Industrial Engineering, Western New England University, Springfield, MA, USA
2
Engineering Management Sector, Institute of Public Administration, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Western New England University, Springfield, MA, USA
4
Advanced Manufacturing LLC, East Hartford, CT, USA
manufacturing barriers and achieve novel and complex forms such as wavy microchannels [3], twisted internal channels [4], and topology-optimized HX [5], advanced features such as airfoil pin fins [6] and internally finned tubes [7], and compact HX such as miniature water-cooled HX [8]. In addition, AM technologies have offered the potential in providing costeffective fabrication of complex HX designs with superior performance. For instance, Gerstler and Erno [9] redesi
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