Design and thermal performance evaluation of airfoil struts body centered cubic lattice structure

The lattice structure is recognized for its superior heat transfer rates compared to conventional fin structures, but it is often accompanied by a proportionally large pressure drop. To minimize pressure drop, this study proposed a modeling strategy for the airfoil struts body centered cubic (BCC) lattice structure, followed by an evaluation of its thermal-hydraulic performance through numerical analysis. The airfoil struts BCC lattice structure demonstrated a notable reduction in pressure drop, ranging approximately from 42 % to 70 %, compared to the circular struts BCC lattice structure. This led to an enhancement in the efficiency index of up to 23 % at the given Reynolds number. The adoption of a staggered arrangement of unit cells in the airfoil struts BCC lattice structure provided an improvement in terms of the efficiency index. Altering the cell aspect ratio while keeping the volume of the unit cell constant led to a slight decrease in the efficiency index. Conversely, reducing the volume of the unit cell while keeping the cell aspect ratio resulted in an improvement in the efficiency index. The efficiency index increased when the relative density was up to 23 %, after which it began to decrease with a further increase in relative density.