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US 9,845,729 B2Granted
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.
Claims10
A method of manufacturing a heat recuperator segment, comprising:
- a) providing a plurality of metal tubes having an initial cross-sectional area;
- b) in a pressing process plastically deforming each of the plurality of metal tubes, including flattening each metal tube into an air cell having a flattened cross-sectional area different from the initial cross-sectional area, each air cell having top and bottom skins to define opposed closed sides and opposed open ends, each of the air cells defining a double skinned wall having a waved configuration including a plurality of wave tops and wave bottoms alternately formed in two directions;
- c) stacking the air cells one upon another to form a stacked 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
- d) retaining the stacked air cells in position.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.