Enhanced thermal and mechanical performance of 3D architected micro-channel heat exchangers

Yongjia Wu; Congcong Zhi; Zhiyi Wang; Yanyu Chen; Caixia Wang; Qiong Chen; Gangfeng Tan; Tingzhen Ming

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13902

Enhanced thermal and mechanical performance of 3D architected micro-channel heat exchangers

Heliyon. 2023 Feb 21;9(3):e13902. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13902. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Yongjia Wu¹, Congcong Zhi¹, Zhiyi Wang¹, Yanyu Chen², Caixia Wang¹, Qiong Chen¹, Gangfeng Tan³, Tingzhen Ming¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA.
³ School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China.

Abstract

Many crystals in nature have simple interatomic microstructures, such as simple cubic (SC), body-centered cubic (BCC), and face-centered cubic (FCC) lattice symmetries, making these structures extremely stable. Inspired by these arrangements, a series of architected micro-channel heat exchangers with rationally designed 3D microstructures were established. A multi-physics mathematical model using thermal-fluid-structure interaction (TFSI) was employed to investigate the coupled heat transfer performance and mechanical properties of these architected heat exchangers. When compared with the corrugated straight plate (CSP) microchannel heat exchanger, the thermal-hydraulic performance factors (TPC) of FCC and BCC microchannel heat transfer were 2.20 and 1.70 times that of SC microchannel heat exchanger, respectively. The micro-channel heat exchanger with FCC architectures could enhance the convective heat transfer performance by 201.0%, while the micro-channel heat exchanger with SC architectures reduced the Von-Mises equivalent (VME) stress by 20.0% when compared with the conventional 2D CSP heat exchanger. The proposed architected micro-channel heat exchangers could find a wide range of potential applications ranging from power electronics in electric vehicles to concentrated solar power systems, where both good convective heat transfer performance and high mechanical strength are simultaneously pursued.

Keywords: Architected materials; Heat transfer; Micro-channel heat exchanger; Thermal stress; Thermal-fluid-structure interaction.