Study, design, manifacturing and testing of an innovative heat exchanger built by Joining by Forming technology

Heat exchangers represent the heart of thermal machines and devices for the conversion of energy. Centuries of research have been spent to improve their performances. Progress is essential to gain higher overall efficiencies, more compactness, or reducing weight or costs, depending on the applications. The work here presented aims to apply for the first time the innovative production technology of Joining By Forming to manufacture a heat exchanger prototype. The Joining By Forming technology will be explored, choosing the tube instability mechanism for this scope. Then, known the advantages and limits of this new method, a parametric study will be carried on with the help of CFD simulations using the software Ansys, to find an optimal layout to build. Successively, the parameters and procedures for the realization will be defined, anticipating the actual production with some laboratory tests and FEM simulations with the software iForm. With the device built, some tests will close the investigation, evaluating the thermal performances of the real prototype and validating the simulations.