Heat transfer effectiveness characteristics maps for additively manufactured TPMS compact heat exchangers

Abstract

Increased power density in modern miniaturized electronics caused difficulty in keeping electronic performance effective. This challenge leads to the search for high-performance compact heat exchanger as one of the thermal management solutions. Conventionally manufactured heat exchangers had limitations that thwart the development of geometrically complex heat exchangers which are capable of exploiting topological aspects to enhance thermal performance. Subsequently, additive manufacturing (AM) is proposed as a powerful fabrication technique for compact heat exchanger based on the mathematically known triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS). In this work, we present 3D compact crossflow heat exchanger computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of geometrically complex structures based on TPMS using STARCCM+ CFD platform. Moreover, CFD modelling is used to obtain new characteristics maps that relate heat transfer effectiveness (Ɛ) and number of transfer units for the proposed heat exchanger. The convection heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop, and inlet and outlet fluid temperature are all examined.