UM students’ research on Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics of 3D Printed Tubes win the best paper awards at the International Symposium on Thermal-Fluid Engineering

Mr. Jiahang Chen, a doctoral student, Mr. Yifan Yang, a doctoral student, and Ms. Lam Lam, a master student, from the Department of Electromechanical Engineering (EME), Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), University of Macau (UM), have won the best paper awards at the 5th International Symposium on Thermal-Fluid Dynamics (ISTFD 2024), which was hosted by Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU). Experts at the symposium fully recognized the effort and achievement of the research team of UM.

ISTFD is one of the leading annual international forums on Thermal-Fluid Dynamics, which aims to advance scientific knowledge and technology development of Thermal-Fluid Dynamics and relevant emerging, cutting-edge and interdisciplinary subjects. This year, there are more than 100 oral and poster presentations, including 9 plenary speeches and 20 keynote speeches presented by outstanding researchers in the symposium.

In the symposium, Mr. Jiahang Chen represented the research group to present a paper titled “Experimental Investigation of Pressure Drop and Heat Transfer Characteristics of 3D-Printed Mini Tubes using Different Fabrication Parameters”. As an advanced manufacturing technology, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) 3D printing technique, which was one of the additive manufacturing methods, could be used to print sophisticated and small-sized heat exchangers with large heat transfer areas so it has attracted high attention in the thermal engineering community in recent years. Due to the differences in inside wall surface characteristics between 3D-printed tubes and traditional tubes, the research team experimentally compared the pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of 3D-printed stainless-steel tubes under different fabrication parameters. The results showed that the friction factors and heat transfer coefficients of the 3D-printed tube were directly affected by different printing parameters.

Ms. Lam Lam represented the research group to present a paper titled “Experimental Investigation on Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics of 3D Printed Tubes with Semicircular and Round-edge Semicircular Channels”. A pair of semicircular channels and rounded semicircular channels were manufactured by 3D printing methods to imitate the different channels in printed circuit heat exchangers (PCHE). The pressure drop of the two tubes was measured and compared under isothermal and uniform heat flux boundary conditions. The research results of this study provide a fundamental understanding of the semicircular channel with or without round-edge inside the PCHE.

The two research projects were supervised by Prof. Lam Mou Tam, Professor of Department of EME. Mr. Jiahang Chen’s research project is sponsored by the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Ms. Lam Lam’s research project is sponsored by the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (MOST).