Introduction of an additively manufactured multi-furcating heat exchanger

Currently, additive manufacturing advancements are continuous and frequent. Heat transfer equipment, such as heat exchangers, are an exemplary application that benefits from additive manufacturing innovation. Attributes such as low weight and volume are attainable using additive designs. Additive also allows monolithic builds with no braze joints required. A novel geometry was conceptualized, built, tested, and compared to the test results from a conventionally manufactured heat exchanger. Both heat exchangers were designed to meet the same heat transfer and pressure drop specifications — those of a commercial fuel-cooled oil cooler. Results show the additive design has equivalent heat transfer to the conventional heat exchanger and meets the pressure drop specifications — while having 66% lower weight when built with the same material and 50% lower volume. Additionally, the additive build requires no braze joints thus is expected to have improved reliability compared to the conventional design. The additive heat exchanger design was successfully built, and passed vacuum leak tests, using four different materials: Aluminum, Titanium 6–4, Cobalt Chrome, and Inconel-718.