Additive Manufacturing Development of Naval Platform Heat Exchangers

The research objective of this proposal is to demonstrate feasibility of Additive Manufacturing (AM) ICME to develop a conformal design heat exchanger (HeX) for the cooling of power electronics hardware. The conformal geometry of the cooling channels will be developed in order to attain higher thermal efficiency as compared to a commercial benchmark. The cross-section of the cooling channels will be evaluated for manufacturability using the selective laser melting process. Thermal FEA and thermal-CFD analysis will be utilized to develop the HeX design. The SLM process design will be performed using thermal-CFD analysis of the melt pool physics as well as residual stress and distortion analysis of the build. Two test articles will be fabricated using the SLM process. One of the articles will be destructively tested in order to characterize the uniformity of weight and wall thickness. The second test article will be interfaced with laboratory equipment in order to perform stress tests and to characterize its thermal efficiency. The ICME procedure will be utilized to determine the potential failure locations and the HeX design will be modified in order to include sensor ports for the collection of data that can be utilized to support qualification.