Recent studies on 3D lattice metal frame technique for enhancement of heat transfer: Discovering trends and reasons

Abstract

A Lattice Metal Frame (LMF) has advantages such as easy design of topology and shape of structure, and consequently easy controlling of pressure drop and heat transfer. The aim of this study is to review the reported studies on heat and fluid flow in 3D LMFs in different heat transfer areas and to categorize the reported studies focused on the forced convection heat transfer enhancement. The categorization is done based on the studied domain, structure topography, analysis approaches, solid and fluid materials, solution method and the selection of reference temperature and characteristic length for definition of dimensionless numbers such as Reynolds and Nusselt numbers. It is found that for enhancement of heat transfer in channels with cubic, tetrahedral, kagome, wire woven and octet struts were received the highest attentions among different structure. Furthermore, in this study, the values of friction factor, Nusselt number and efficiency index of the studies on single layer LMF defined channel height as characteristic length are also compared and discussed. It is found that X type structure with OA flow arrangement has the highest friction factor as well as Nusselt number while X type with OB flow arrangement has the highest efficiency index (thermos-hydraulic performance). It is suggested to separate the solution approaches into two groups as single layer (such as fin approach) and multilayer (such as volume average) approaches. Unification of characteristic length and reference temperature difference used by researchers will accelerate studies in this field.