Numerical and experimental investigation of additively manufactured shell-lattice copper heat exchanger

Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) shell lattices have superior heat transfer properties due to their staggered channels. Based on these structures, a series of TPMS heat exchangers (HEs) are fabricated and investigated. However, the existing research is mainly limited to the performance investigation of HEs based on low-thermal-conductivity materials or the simulation study of the representative parts. In this study, we successfully fabri-cated a pure copper TPMS HE and performed a comprehensive numerical analysis. Three HEs, including Copper TPMS, SS316L TPMS, and SS316L plate were studied and compared to reveal the mechanism of their perfor-mance differences. Numerical analysis showed that TPMS HEs owned more uniform temperature and velocity fields than plate HE. The calculated heat-exchange effectiveness of the copper TPMS HE is about 58%-96% higher than that of SS316L plate HE, while the measured value of that of SS316L TPMS HE is about 38%-48% more than that of SS316L plate HE, respectively. The convective heat-transfer coefficient of copper TPMS HE is approximately 2.16-2.69 times that of SS316L plate HE and 1.17-1.33 times that of SS316L TPMS HE. The volume goodness factors of copper TPMS and SS316L TPMS HEs are about 1.49-1.87 and 1.2-1.41 times that of SS316L plate HE, respectively. The volumetric heat-transfer coefficient of copper TPMS HE is much better than that of metal plate HE and approximately 18-25 times that of the polymer TPMS HEs. This study indicates that the pure copper TPMS HE is a good candidate for next-generation HEs.