Thermo-hydraulic performance of a 3D printed spiderweb-inspired heat exchanger: Design optimisation, numerical, and experimental study

Air-side heat exchangers are often limited by the trade-off between heat transfer enhancement, and the pressure drop penalty that increases fan power and operating cost. Additive manufacturing enables topology driven cores that can intensify convection while maintaining low flow resistance, offering a pathway to more energy efficient air-side thermal management. This study designs, additively manufactures, and evaluates a 3D-printed spiderweb-inspired heat exchanger using a Design of Experiments-guided design approach, followed by numerical and experimental thermo-hydraulic assessment. A 30-run design of experiments (DoE) quantifies the effects of tube diameter, inclination angle, height, and wall thickness on the air-side effective heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop, leading to an optimal manufacturable configuration. The selected core is fabricated in AlSi10Mg by laser powder bed fusion and tested on an air–water rig (air inlet 45 °C; water inlet 7 °C; water mass flow rate 0.17 kg/s) over air mass flow rates of 0.002–0.008 kg/s. The measured heat transfer rate increases from approximately 48 W to 84 W, while the air-side pressure drop remains low (26.10–33.20 Pa). A conjugate CFD model reproduces the trends, with deviations of 7.4–13% for heat transfer rate and 10–13% for the effective heat transfer coefficient; pressure drop is slightly underpredicted, consistent with LPBF surface roughness and geometric tolerances. Thermo-hydraulic benchmarking using air-side coefficient of performance indicates a favourable trade-off relative to representative additively manufactured cores, primarily due to reduced flow resistance. The results highlight the potential for LPBF-enabled spiderweb topologies to lower fan power demand and associated electricity use and emissions in pressure drop limited industrial and building air-side applications.