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Heat exchanger header with fractal geometry
- pifm_guy 4y agoI 3d printed this well before 2019... Made in plastic as a prototype heat exchanger designed in openscad. Is there anything I can do, or must I now shelve my project because I didn't see this patent be filed?
- elil17 4y agoDid you publicly publish your work? E.g. blog post, youtube video, etc. Could be as simple as a single photo or a brief written description of the design. If so, you're good to continue your work. You could even try to help the patent examiner find your work by publishing it and using keywords related to the patent.
- d110af5ccf 4y agoRealistically (not legally) you can continue for personal use. Good luck commercializing though. Even if you published the work previously you'd most likely have an expensive legal battle ahead of you.
- beambot 4y agoA simple Google Image Search for "fractal 3d print heat exchanger" yields ample prior art.
- zardo 4y agoIt really should be denied simply on the requirement that it not be obvious to a practitioner in the relevant field.
- defrost 4y agoFractal branching increasing surface area while reducing sub unit cross sections for increased heat exchange efficiency was obvious to practitioners in the field in the 1980s. That's when the Mandelbrot book(s) hit the mainstream in mathematics and engineering following his coining of the word in 1975. As an undergraduate at the time I can attest such ideas were extensively discussed, there are many people with notebooks from the time sketching out notions of practical and impractical applications and further study in multiple dimensions. Relationships between fractal branching, leafs and fluid exchange (be the fluid heat or CO2 or reactants) have been sketched out diagrammatically and analytically ad nauseam in the time since.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoIANAL but if you published anything, now would be a great time to maybe make a YouTube video showing off any posts you made, just to help build a case. Maybe you don’t need to file a lawsuit but if you use the keywords from the patent in a new video about your previous work then someone else trying to commercialize such a thing could find what you’ve done and use that to file a lawsuit.
- s_tec 4y agoI feel like this is an obvious idea, but we simply haven't had the 3D printing technology to make things like this before. Casting this using traditional methods would be extremely difficult. Nobody bothered making stuff like this, not because they never thought of it, but because it was always too expensive.
- steeve 4y agoRelated: "3D Printed Heat Exchanger Uses Gyroids for Better Cooling" In short: 2x smaller, 2x more efficient https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qifd3yn9S0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qifd3yn9S0 In general, algorithmic engineering and AI designs are where 3D printing can really shine.
- hinkley 4y ago1/2 the volume, which is 40% smaller diameter (Assuming the length is kept, which as a drop-in replacement it would have to be?) The inventor talks about how the internal structure is based on minimizing surface area. That would of course reduce the material but in a heat exchanger don't you want to maximize surface area, not minimize it? Especially if your heat exchanger has a higher thermal transfer rate than the fluids. It makes me wonder if there's an answer to this design that's another 20% smaller.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoYeah I did this about 3 years back using thermally conducting filament, the goal is exactly that - maximize surface area while maximizing float through the manifold. It’s actually stupidly easy to do these days with cura. Make your heat sink shape, say a cube, and slice it with zero wall thickness and gyroid infill. Then attach to a copper plate, and add a fan to the top. The problem is materials. Most people don’t have the ability to print in copper or aluminum. The thermally conducive filaments are absurdly expensive (like $120/kg) and the conductivity isn’t that great, so you can generally do better with a fin based thing in copper or aluminum. I think it would be possible to make a filament with aligned graphene in the filament that does really well, but I’m not that hard core. Another idea I have is building these out of graphene aligned in a super critical bath of silver. But that requires some serious equipment for the pressures and temperatures.
- zmgsabst 4y agoFor some geometries, you can also 3D print plastic and then cast in sand. That won’t get you the full power of 3D printing, but you can get many geometries you couldn’t otherwise.
- wwqrd 4y agoGood example of when obvious patents harm innovation.
- FatActor 4y agoIs that really fractal in the sense of fractional dimension? Or is it just self-similar? I watched a video on this for 3b1b and it undid 30 years of thinking I knew what "fractal" meant and now I know nothing.
- sfpotter 4y agoIf you really want something to be fractal, there needs to be a limiting process. You can't refine something infinitely in physical space, because of fundamental physical limits. So, you could say it is "only" self-similar. But this is kind of missing the point. The engineering benefits of something "being" fractal are realized in this case even though the limiting process terminates below a certain point.
- prvc 4y agoNo material object can be "fractal"--- it is just being used as a buzzword here.
- yarg 4y agoFractaloid would be a more accurate description. True fractals are self-similar regardless of scale.
- FatActor 4y ago> True fractals are self-similar regardless of scale. That's not true: the coastline of England is a well-known fractal and it has zero self-similarity. Self-similarity can be a property of some fractals, but it is not a requirement to be a fractal.
- jhallenworld 4y agoIt seems like it would massively complicate heat exchanger repair.. I learned of an obscure tool recently- a roller tube expander. You use this to tight-fit a tube in a boiler's tube-sheet. So you can install or replace tubes in pressure vessels such as a boilers or heat exchangers. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UQKNapTBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UQKNapTBE Failure: https://youtu.be/HlXVP2HHTfo?t=696 https://youtu.be/HlXVP2HHTfo?t=696 Repair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7znd-hpy2Vc&t=708s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7znd-hpy2Vc&t=708s
- elil17 4y agoThis is for aerospace heat exchangers, where weight is the primary concern. This would not be used along-side tube-base heat exchangers, but rather with 3D printed heat exchangers.
- jhallenworld 4y agoReplacing tubes in aerospace heat exchangers seems to be a thing: https://www.meggitt.com/products-services/heat-exchangers/ https://www.meggitt.com/products-services/heat-exchangers/ "Its innovative design means that single tubes can be easily replaced during overhaul periods, minimising costs to operators. The operational lifetime of a tubular unit is 3 million flying hours and 50 million Serck Aviation bonded interfaces in the field have never failed." Even the patent mentions: "In addition to aerospace applications, the disclosed headers can be used generally in other transportation industries, as well as industrial applications." But actually I think the spreader could be contained within some kind of bell-shaped header, and not actually attached to the heat exchanger tubes, just immersed in the same fluid. So replacement might be easy. But any kind of spreader is adding weight compared with an empty header, so not sure if the easing of the fluid flow is worth the weight gain. No doubt this depends on the application.
- elil17 4y ago1. This design would have to be 3D printed because there is not a good way to manufacture it using traditional methods, so it would probably be paired with a 3D printed heat exchanger. 3D printed heat exchangers do not typically have tubes. Rather, they employ more complex geometry such as gyroids. edit: actually I'm not sure this is true. I guess you could come up with a similar design that could be IM'd. 2. Just because you could use the design in "other transportation industries" doesn't mean anyone is actually planning to do it. With the technology as expensive as it is right now, it would not make economic sense. 3. Having a spreader is not primarily about "easing the fluid flow," it's about ensuring that the entire heat exchanger gets fluid flowing through it. Typically this is worth it in applications where weight matters (because you can't afford the dead weight of part of the heat exchanger which is not actually getting much fluid flowing through it), but it is not worth it in industrial or HVAC applications (because it's cheaper to just build a bit larger of a heat exchanger). I do like the idea of a "floating spreader" - I will have to see if that has been done before.
- mechhacker 4y agoWould like to see how it handles thermal cycles
- sacnoradhq 4y agoSeems pretty obvious: maximum surface area with minimum backpressure, the design becomes like "lungs" or "placenta" branching from "artery" down in steps to "blood vessels". It looks like some early jet turbine combustors. "Kidneys" and reverse osmosis cartridges OTOH appear to function for optimizing for different constraints involving liquids and pressure.
- elil17 4y agoFYI, this is not something that people are looking to use outside of aerospace. The heat exchangers in homes, factories, power plants, etc. are designed to be energy efficient and cheap. This is designed to be extremely light weight and 3D printed. It's much, much more expensive than anything used outside of aerospace.
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- jdkee 4y agoDidn't the Reason Hypervelocity Railgun in Snow Crash use one of these?
- milgrim 4y agoYes, that’s also what I was thinking of when I read the headline. “I’m sure they’ll listen to reason”
- pacaro 4y agoWhile this isn't relevant to my line of work, so looking at it isn't going to be problematic, I don't think that posting direct links to patents is a good idea. Just one employee reading a patent can have implications on a business
- sampo 4y ago2011: Fractal heat transfer device https://patents.google.com/patent/US9228785B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9228785B2
- politician 4y agoShould we allow patents for something AI designed?
- Sosh101 4y agoReminds me of the fractal vice grip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU I'm sure there are going to be many applications for fractal geometry found as computer aided design becomes more AI supported.
- SnowHill9902 4y agoGood luck building and cleaning that. Dorks don’t make good engineers.
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