Heat Exchanger Components Using Minimal Surfaces
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for manufacturing heat exchanger components are complex and costly, involving intricate assembly and brazing, which increase material separation and reduce efficiency, while lacking the use of minimal surfaces and skeletons that could optimize heat transfer and flow.
Innovation Solution
The method employs additive manufacturing to create heat exchanger components using minimal surfaces and skeletons, which are triply periodic and made from high thermal conductivity materials, allowing for efficient heat transfer and reduced material usage, eliminating complex assembly operations, and enabling customization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If known methods of manufacturing heat exchangers are used involving complex assembly and brazing operations, then heat exchanger components can be manufactured, but manufacturing cost increases and assembly complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple separate heat exchanger components (base plates, fins, manifolds) into a single monolithic structure manufactured by additive manufacturing. This eliminates the need for complex assembly operations, brazing, and soldering of multiple parts, directly resolving the contradiction between ease of manufacture and device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical assembly methods (brazing, soldering, welding) with additive manufacturing technology. This substitution eliminates the need for complex mechanical assembly operations and high-cost joining processes, directly addressing the manufacturing cost and assembly complexity contradiction.
2Reliability
If fins and corrugations are added to increase surface area, then heat transfer efficiency improves, but device complexity increases and manufacturing cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the base plates and fins into a single monolithic structure where fins are integrally formed with the base plates through additive manufacturing. This eliminates the need for separate fin attachment operations while maintaining the heat transfer efficiency benefits of increased surface area, resolving the contradiction between heat transfer efficiency and structure complexity.
3Ease of operation
If numerous separate volumes are isolated in heat exchanger, then fluid flow can be controlled, but pressure equalization problems occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates minimal surfaces as intermediary structures that connect separate fluid volumes while maintaining their isolation. These minimal surfaces act as mediators that allow pressure equalization between volumes while still enabling controlled fluid flow, resolving the contradiction between fluid flow control and pressure equalization.
4Ease of manufacture
If traditional manufacturing methods are used with thin foil construction, then heat exchanger components can be assembled, but brazing or similar processes are required to connect parts
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional brazing and soldering processes with additive manufacturing technology that creates monolithic structures. This substitution eliminates the need for separate connection processes and high-temperature joining operations, directly resolving the contradiction between component assembly ease and connection process complexity.
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 minimizes material separation, enhances pressure equalization, improves flow properties, and reduces manufacturing costs, resulting in more efficient and cost-effective heat exchanger components with self-regulating flow and temperature.
Implementation Method 1
a method of using minimal surfaces and minimal skeletons to make heat exchanger components by an additive process
Implementation Method 2
depositing at least one layer of a material having a high thermal conductivity onto a top surface of a base
Data Source
AI summary
A method of using a minimal surface or a minimal skeleton to make a heat exchanger component is provided. The method comprises the steps of generating a stereolithography file from design data, slicing the stereolithography file into two-dimensional patterns, repeating the two-dimensional patterns sequentially to produce a three-dimensional minimal surface component or minimal skeleton component, and depositing at least one layer of a material having a high thermal conductivity onto a top surface of a base, wherein the deposited material forms either a three-dimensional minimal surface component or a three-dimensional minimal skeleton component. Also provided are the heat exchanger components made by the embodiments of the method using either minimal surfaces or minimal skeletons.