Simulation and experimental study on flow and heat transfer performance of sheet-network and solid-network disturbance structures based on triply periodic minimal surface

Abstract

Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures are widely used in the field of flow and heat transfer. In this paper, four TPMS structures, Schwartz Diamond-sheet (D-sheet), Schwartz Diamond-solid (D-solid), Schoen IWP-sheet (IWP-sheet), and Schoen IWP-solid (IWP-solid), are designed based on two structure generation strategies. The above structures all are manufactured through additive manufacturing, and the material is AlSi10Mg. The samples were characterized by X-ray scanning. The flow and heat transfer performance of different TPMS structures was studied by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental methods. The results show that the pressure drop of sheet-network is larger than that of solid-network for the same TPMS type. With the same structure generation strategy, the pressure drop of Schwartz Diamond (D-type) is greater than that of Schoen IWP (IWP-type). The heat transfer performance of the TPMS structure shows the same results as the pressure drop. The performance enhancement criterion (PEC) of the solid-network TPMS is better than that of the sheet-network structure, and the D-type TPMS structure is better than the IWP-type structure. The average PEC of D-solid and IWP-solid is 31 % and 44 % larger than that of D-sheet and IWP-sheet, respectively. The average PEC of D-sheet and D-solid is 11.8 % and 1.7 % larger than that of IWP-sheet and IWP-solid, respectively. The mechanism of the higher PEC of the solid-network structure is the low pressure drop caused by the high through-hole ratio and relatively concentrated skeleton. Under the same pressure drop, the heat transfer performance of TPMS with D-type sheet structure is better. The research content of the article is mainly applied to fin-enhancement, which can replace fins in traditional heat exchangers. In actual engineering applications, the TPMS structures type is reasonably selected according to the requirements.