Design analysis of the “Schwartz D” based heat exchanger: A numerical study

Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) have promising thermophysical properties, which makes them a suitable candidate in the production of low-temperature waste heat recovery systems. A TPMS thermal performance is connected to the complex flow patterns inside the pores and their interactions with the walls. Unfortunately, the experimental study’s design analysis and optimization of TPMS heat exchangers are complicated due to the flow pattern complexity and visual limitations inside the TPMS. In this study, three-dimensional steady-state, conjugate heat transfer (CHT) simulations for laminar incompressible flow were carried out to quantify the performance of a TPMS based heat exchanger. TPMS Lattices based on Schwartz D architecture was modeled to elucidate the design parameters and establishing relationships between gas velocity, heat transfer, and thermal performance of TPMS at different wall thicknesses. In this study, four types of lattices from the same architectures with varying wall thickness were examined for a range of the gas velocity, with one design found to be the optimized lattice providing the highest thermal performance. The results and methodology presented here can facilitate improvements in TPMS-heat exchangers’ fabrication for recycling the waste heat in low pitch thermal systems.