Heat exchanger
OwnerDrummond Watson Hislop, Stephen David Josephinventors
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A heat exchanger is formed with tessellating conduits 4 passing therethrough. The tessellating conduits having transverse cross-sectional shapes which together substantially completely cover the transverse plane to the heat exchange 2. The tessellating conduits may be the outer conduits 18 within conduit pairs formed of an outer conduit 18 and an inner conduit 22. The outer conduits may have a cross-section that is a regular hexagon and the inner conduits may have a cross-section that is a circle. The heat exchanger can advantageously be formed by selective remelting of material with an energy beam.
Claims17
A heat exchanger comprising:
- a body with a portion having a plurality of substantially parallel fluid carrying tessellating conduits passing therethrough, wherein
- said tessellating conduits have transverse cross-sections with one or more shapes that substantially completely cover a plane through said portion of said body transverse to said tessellating conduits by repeated use of said one or more shapes.
A method of making at least a portion of a heat exchanger, said portion having a plurality of tessellating conduits passing therethrough, said method comprising the steps of:
- providing a plurality of successive layers of a material to be remelted;
- and
- energy beam remelting predetermined regions of each layer in accordance with a predetermined design, said energy beam remelting of each layer being performed prior to addition of a successive layer;
- wherein said predetermined regions of each layer subjected to energy beam remelting form solid structures within said layer and said energy beam remelting of each layer fuses said predetermined regions of each layer to remelted regions of a preceding layer;
- and
- said tessellating conduits have transverse cross-sections with one or more shapes that substantially completely cover a plane through said portion of said body transverse to said tessellating conduits by repeated use of said one or more shapes.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.