Optimizing, Fabricating and Characterizing Additively Manufactured Heat Exchanger Tubing

Additive Manufacturing brings unique opportunities to the fabrication world, especially for complex, high value added components that are challenging if not impossible to fabricate using traditional technologies. This project was developed to design, build and test a variety of shapes, internal geometries, and lengths of process tubing for a specialized heat exchanger that operates from nominally 140 to - 40 degrees C. A preliminary design was fabricated and based on the knowledge gained from this component, several design iterations were made to optimize the heat transfer while not adversely affecting the thermal strains. Several additional components were prepared and the parts were characterized for burst strength, tensile properties, microstructure, and chemistry. In addition, the build data were analyzed to determine if a correlation could be made with the properties. This presentation will describe the application for the heat exchanger, the goals of the project, the results for the optimization, fabrication, and characterization.