Designing 3-D Printed Heat Exchangers in a Senior-level Thermal Systems Course
- Conference
- Location
-
Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
-
June 23, 2018
- Start Date
-
June 23, 2018
- End Date
-
July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Mechanical Engineering
- Page Count
-
11
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--30274
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/30274
- Download Count
-
860
Paper Authors
Gregory J. Michna South Dakota State University
Gregory Michna is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at South Dakota State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006, held positions as a Lecturer at Iowa State University and as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and joined the faculty at SDSU in 2009. He teaches courses in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and energy systems.
Todd Letcher South Dakota State University
Todd Letcher is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at South Dakota State University. His research focuses of on additive manufacturing.
Abstract
A senior-level technical elective course for Mechanical Engineering students from the authors’ university is Design of Thermal Systems. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a systems approach to the design, modeling, and simulation of thermal systems. In the Fall 2017 semester the authors introduced a new design project to the course – one in which students were asked to design and simulate the performance of an air-to-water heat exchanger to be made through an additive manufacturing process.
The students worked in groups to design the heat exchangers. The instructor expected that students would take advantage of the additive manufacturing method, which allows for more complicated geometries to be realized than traditional manufacturing, to integrate heat transfer enhancement structures such as vortex generators into their designs. However, the student designs were very similar to conventionally manufactured heat exchangers. Because of the very low thermal conductivity of the plastic material, fin efficiency and wall thermal resistance became primary considerations in the design, which gave students a much better understanding of these concepts.
After completion of the project, the heat exchangers were manufactured on the small, inexpensive 3D printers housed in the department and were tested in a wind tunnel constructed for the purpose. The team with the best performing design was announced to the class. The “contest” aspect of the project and the knowledge that their designs would be manufactured served as motivation for the students. Student survey results showed this project both increased student’s enthusiasm for the course and improved their achievement of the student learning outcomes for the course.
Michna, G. J., & Letcher, T. (2018, June), Designing 3-D Printed Heat Exchangers in a Senior-level Thermal Systems Course Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30274
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015