Additively Manufactured Conformal Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Heat Exchanger Design and Evaluation

This work explored the process of designing and building a conformal, additively manufactured heat exchanger with a triply periodic minimal surface lattice. AlSi10Mg was selected as the build material due to its relatively low density, high thermal conductivity, and workability in both additively manufacturing with Laser Powder-Bed Fusion and post-build machining. A Schwarz-Diamond lattice structure with a cylindrical cell map was designed within the heat exchanger shell due to its high surface-area to volume ratio. Cell size between two models was varied, and resultant performance, in terms of pressure loss and total heat exchange, was measured against Reynolds number of the fluids to determine the degree of influence that lattice cell size had on performance.