Microstructural Characterization and Thermomechanical Behavior of Additively Manufactured AlSi10Mg Material and Architected Cellular Structures

Additive manufacturing facilitated the fabrication of novel and new thermal management devices. Of interest, they are lattice-based heat sinks and heat exchangers. The advantage of using lattices to propose novel thermal management devices is the fact that they provide high surface area to volume ratio which maximizes the area of heat transfer in a specific volume. However, since these lattice-based thermal management devices are undergoing large thermal gradients, it is important to investigate their mechanical properties at different temperature. In this work, the potential of employing metallic lattice as heat sinks is studied through mimicking the high temperature operation conditions and the resulting thermomechanical loads experienced by the heat sink. The proposed heat sinks are sheet-based lattices with topologies based on the Schwartz diamond (D) triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS). Aluminum Diamond TPMS lattices are additively manufactured and tested under compression at 25 and 150 degrees C. Results showed that variation in mechanical properties with temperature was most pronounced at higher relative densities, whereas the variation was minimal in lower relative densities. The results show that AlSi10Mg diamond TPMS lattices have excellent thermal and mechanical properties making them ideal for thermal management applications.