A TPMS-Based Hybrid Fin Design for Effective Heat Transfer Enhancement

Abstract Heat transfer enhancement technology, as an important means of improving energy efficiency, is gaining increasing research interest. Conventional fin designs for heat transfer enhancement have hit a bottleneck, necessitating the exploration of revolutionary design concepts. The present study examines the Schwartz-D TPMS structure as a new fin design in liquid cooling and elucidates the mechanism of longitudinal flow mixing induced by the intertwined interior space. The fluid-only analysis indicates that the cooling performance improvement by the Schwartz-D structure is superior when the heat transfer process is determined by flow convection, but attenuates to a comparable level with traditional fin structures as solid conduction becomes predominant. Based on these understandings, the current work proposes a novel hybrid design that integrates pin fins at regular intervals between periodic Schwartz-D structures. The fluid-solid conjugate analysis, which is validated by experimental measurements, demonstrates that the hybrid design maintains the best cooling performance for the entire range of fin material thermal conductivity.