Additive Manufacturing for Heat Exchangers

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Program:
ARID
Award:
$1,943,679
Location:
Chicago, Illinois
Status:
ALUMNI
Project Term:
03/17/2016 - 09/30/2020

Technology Description:

The Boeing Company is developing a next-generation air-cooled heat exchanger by leveraging technological advances in additive manufacturing (AM). The work builds on a previous ARPA-E IDEAS award to the University of Maryland that included the fabrication of geometrically complex heat exchanger coupons. Boeing subsequently demonstrated AM fabrication of thin-walled structures with a thickness of 125 to 150 microns, which represents a 50% reduction relative to then-state-of-the-art AM processes. The high temperature heat exchanger currently under development employs complex internal geometries to achieve an expected 20-30% improvement in thermal performance and up to 20% reduction in weight. Current manufacturing techniques include manual stacking of heat exchangers, brazing in a thermal vacuum chamber, and welding of external features. Each of these manufacturing steps is time consuming, expensive, and may damage the part. A validated AM process for heat exchangers could lead to fabrication cost savings well in excess of 25% by eliminating these steps. If successful, these high performance, lightweight heat exchangers would enable more energy-efficient aircraft. AM can also expand the design space for heat exchangers, enabling advanced designs that conform to challenging form factor requirements. Advances in efficient air-side cooling could also have significant spillover benefits in additional industries such as power plant and distributed energy systems, automotive, air-conditioning and refrigeration, power electronics, and chemical processing.

Potential Impact:

If successful, Boeing’s heat exchanger technology will help reduce the cost and/or weight of a number of aerospace systems.

Security:

Improvements to performance and weight would yield reduced fuel consumption in many applications and help to mitigate the need to import oil from overseas.

Environment:

Improvements to performance and weight would yield reduced fuel consumption and thereby reduced emissions in many applications, such as commercial aircraft.

Economy:

Reduced unit cost and improvements to performance and weight would yield a lower total cost of ownership through reductions in both capital and operating expenses.

Contact

ARPA-E Program Director:
Dr. David Tew
Project Contact:
Arun Muley
Press and General Inquiries Email:
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov
Project Contact Email:
arun.muley@boeing.com

Partners

3D Systems Corporation
Stratasys Co./Solid Concepts Inc.
University of Maryland
Niagara Thermal Products

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Release Date:
09/26/2014