Design & Validation of a 3D-printed Heat Exchanger Manifold

Design & Validation of a 3D-printed Heat Exchanger Manifold

Gupta, Mayank (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering)

Hooman, K. (mentor)
Arnaud, L. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Mechanical Engineering

2023-08-25

Metal additive manufacturing has enabled great diversity and design freedom in heat exchanger design. However, these benefits cannot be adequately realised without optimizing its ancillary components as well, specifically the inlet and outlet manifolds. Optimizing the manifolds can significantly improve the flow distribution inside the heat exchanger core. This in turn will improve the heat exchange performance and reduce flow obstruction. More importantly, it can reduce the size of the setup, which makes for much cheaper and faster manufacturing. Literature on optimization of flows is quite vast and extensive, but experimental validation is lacking. It is not well understood whether 2D optimized parts hold up to 3D validation, and whether it differs for laminar and turbulent regimes. In this work, a manifold is numerically optimized in 2D and 3D for various flow regimes including both laminar and turbulent flow. The ideal set of assumptions for each specific case is then prescribed based on the results. Validation is performed for some of the geometries after manufacturing them via 3D-printing.

Fluid dynamics
Topology Optimisation
Optimization
3D printing
Heat Exchanger
Manifold
Manifold optimization
Maldistribution

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8b96c859-7e87-4cda-8f7f-6b0ced32b389

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Mayank Gupta