In this project we bring together emerging methods and methodologies in manufacturing, design and experiment based upon available expertise in research groups at KU Leuven and VITO to drastically improve the overall energy efficiency (reduced pressure drop and increased effectiveness), and material use in compact heat exchangers. This becomes more and more crucial to meet future demands for cost‐ effective distributed energy systems and light‐weight mobile components.
Current design methods are often based on trial‐and‐error and combine simplified heuristic heat exchanger models with experimental calibration to obtain specific designs that are verified in a very limited range of test conditions only. The huge increase in manufacturing flexibility that comes with 3D printing enables a new generation of heat exchangers which overcome the limitations of present designs. To fully exploit these new opportunities, novel design methodologies at the forefront of what is presently available in numerical software are crucial.
Call for interested companies to become members of the Industrial Advisory Board.
Details and contact persons can be found in the appendix.
More info?