Method of manufacturing recuperator air cells
AssigneePratt & Whitney Canada Corp.
InventorsAndreas ELEFTHERIOU, Daniel ALECU, David MENHEERE
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of manufacturing a recuperator segment uses metal tubes deformed into air cells in a waved configuration. The air cells are stacked one to another to form a double skinned recuperator segment providing cold air passages through the respective air cells and hot gas passages through spaces between adjacent air cells.
Claims16
A method of manufacturing a recuperator segment, comprising:
- a) plastically deforming a plurality of metal tubes, each tube being deformed into an air cell having top and bottom skins to define opposed closed sides and opposed open ends, each of the air cells having a waved configuration including a plurality of wave tops and wave bottoms alternately formed in two directions;
- b) stacking the air cells one upon another to form a double skinned wall configuration of the recuperator segment such that the wave bottoms of one of the air cells are supported on the wave tops of an adjacent one of the air cells, thereby providing cold air passages defined in the respective air cells and extending through the recuperator segment, and thereby forming hot gas passages through the recuperator segment between the adjacent air cells;
- and
- c) retaining the stacked air cells in position.
A recuperator segment comprising a plurality of double skinned walls, each of the walls having a top skin and a bottom skin spaced apart from each other to define an air cell in a seamless hollow structure including opposed closed sides and opposed open ends, the air cell having a longitudinal axis extending between the opposed open ends, and having a waved configuration including a plurality of wave tops and wave bottoms alternately formed in two directions, the double skinned walls being stacked with the wave bottoms of one air cell supported on the wave tops of an adjacent air cell in order to form said recuperator segment wherein the air cells provide cold air passages defined in and extending through the respective double skinned walls between the opposed open ends of the respective air cells and wherein spaces between adjacent ones of the double skinned walls provide hot gas passages extending through the recuperator segment between the opposed sides of the respective air cells.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.