The Effects of 3D Printing Parameters and Surface Roughness on Convective Heat Transfer Performance

Abstract

Abstract Additive manufacturing technology and applications have quickly expanded into many industries over the last several years. Improvements in resolution, strength, and material options have helped propel further growth of the industry. This study focuses on an additive manufacturing technology called fused filament fabrication (FFF). FFF involves the extrusion and layer-by-layer deposition of a molten thermoplastic material to create the desired part. One potential new application of FFF is the manufacture of heat exchangers and heat sinks. This study focuses on developing baseline experimental data related to convective heat transfer coefficients over surfaces of commonly used polymers in FFF 3d printing while varying printing parameters. Samples with layer heights (LH) of 0.1 mm, 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm were printed. As the layer height increases, the surface roughness also increased. Sample 1 of LH = 0.1 mm had a roughness of 9.72 μm and at a Reynolds number of 13,200 had a heat transfer coefficient of 72.2 W/m2-K and sample 1 of LH = 0.3 mm had a roughness of 28.83 μm and at a Reynolds number of 13,600 had a heat transfer coefficient of 84.6 W/m2-K.