Cooling Architecture Heat Exchanger for Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing heat exchangers in gas turbine engines face challenges in optimizing heat transfer while maintaining low pressure drop, requiring labor-intensive iterative design processes to balance these factors.
Innovation Solution
A unit cell performance factor (UCPF) is introduced, balancing heat transfer and pressure drop through a relationship between wall thickness, hydraulic diameter, and temperature ratio, optimizing the geometry of the cooling architecture within the heat exchanger.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stress or pressure
If wall thickness is increased to reduce pressure drop, then pressure drop decreases, but heat transfer performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by establishing a quantitative relationship between wall thickness, hydraulic diameter, and temperature ratio through the unit cell performance factor. By systematically varying these parameters and their interactions, the invention identifies optimal combinations that simultaneously achieve low pressure drop and high heat transfer performance, resolving the contradiction between these two opposing requirements.
2Reliability
If iterative design process is used to balance heat transfer and pressure drop, then optimization is achieved, but design time and resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by developing a closed-form analytical solution that calculates optimal unit cell geometry directly from performance requirements. This eliminates the need for time-consuming iterative design processes, as the optimal configuration is determined through a single calculation using the unit cell performance factor, significantly reducing design time while maintaining optimization quality.
3Temperature
If unit cell geometry is optimized for heat transfer, then heat transfer performance improves, but pressure drop increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent resolves this contradiction by introducing the unit cell performance factor that captures the coupled relationship between heat transfer and pressure drop. By changing the approach from optimizing for heat transfer alone to optimizing the composite performance factor that includes both heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop, the invention identifies geometric configurations that achieve superior overall performance rather than sacrificing one parameter for the other.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach enables highly efficient heat exchangers with superior heat transfer performance and minimal pressure drop, reducing redesign needs and saving time and resources by identifying optimal unit cell sizes early in the design process.
Implementation Method 1
a cooling architecture 122 disposed within the substrate 110 between the first and second walls 112, 114. The cooling architecture 122 can include a set of fluidly separate cooling conduits 124 for exchanging heat between fluid flow within the conduits 124
Data Source
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AI summary
An heat exchanger (20) and method for forming the heat exchanger (20), the heat exchanger (20) including a cooling architecture (122) comprising at least one unit cell (132, 132a) having a set of walls (138) with a thickness, the set of walls (138) defining fluidly separate conduits (124, 124c, 124h) having multiple openings (140, 140a, 140b), each of the multiple openings (140, 140a, 140b) having a hydraulic diameter; wherein an average fluid temperature (Tf) to material temperature limit (Tm) ratio TfTm is greater than 0 and less than or equal to 1.250<TfTm≤1.25.; and wherein the thickness (t) and the hydraulic diameter (DH) relate to each other by an equation: TfTm⋅DH23DH+tDH+2t83 to define a unit cell (132, 132a) performance factor (UCPF).