Air-Side Heat Transfer Enhancement Utilizing Design Optimization and an Additive Manufacturing Technique

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study of an innovative manifold microchannel design for air-side heat transfer enhancement that uses additive manufacturing (AM) technology. A numerical-based multi-objective optimization was performed to maximize the coefficient of performance and gravimetric heat transfer density (Q/MΔT) of air–water heat exchanger designs that incorporate either manifold-microchannel or conventional surfaces for air-side heat transfer enhancement. Performance comparisons between the manifold-microchannel and conventional heat exchangers studied under the current work show that the design based on the manifold-microchannel in conjunction with additive manufacturing promises to push the performance substantially beyond that of conventional technologies. Different scenarios based on manufacturing constraints were considered to study the effect of such constraints on the heat exchanger performance. The results clearly demonstrate that the AM-enabled complex design of the fins and manifolds can significantly improve the overall performance, based on the criteria described in this paper. Based on the current manufacturing limit, up to nearly 60% increase in gravimetric heat transfer density is possible for the manifold-microchannel heat exchanger compared to a wavy-fin heat exchanger. If the manufacturing limit (fin thickness and manifold width) can be reduced even further, an even larger improvement is possible.

Experimental characterization of heat transfer in an additively manufactured polymer heat exchanger

“…However, despite its advantages there has been only limited work in implementing additive manufacturing for heat exchanger fabrication. Some of the reported works, such as those by Harrish et al [23], Cormier et al [25], Tsopanos et al [26], Arie et al [27,28], and Zhang [29], have shown some success in the use of AM for metallic heat exchanger fabrication. The reported works on the use of additive manufacturing for polymer heat exchanger fabrication is even more limited.…”

Manufactured chemistry: Rethinking unit operation design in the age of additive manufacturing

“…Recent work from the Smart and Small Thermal Systems Laboratory at the University of Maryland employs the design freedom inherent in additively manufactured device—which is not possible with traditional manufacturing methods—to design and build an innovative manifolded microchannel heat exchanger for the enhancement of an air‐cooled heat exchanger. Utilizing this novel design, it is shown that the gravimetric heat transfer density (Q/mΔT) of the heat exchanger can be increased by nearly 60% . Further, the authors demonstrated a heat exchanger built with Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) of titanium (alloy Ti‐6Al‐4V) designed with this approach, the heat exchanger was measured to have a doubling in the heat‐transfer coefficient with no change in the pressure drop .…”

Numerical Optimization, Characterization, and Experimental Investigation of Additively Manufactured Communicating Microchannels

“…Other studies that have used optimization in conjunction with L-PBF heat exchangers include Dede et al [15], who used topology optimization, and Arie et al [16], who performed a multiobjective optimization study. In both cases, the optimized design outperformed the conventional.…”