(187b) A Structurally-Integrated Heat Exchanger for a Hypersonic Vehicle: Exploring a Stretch-Dominated Additively Manufactured Metal Lattice Combustor Liner Concept

A novel concept for a multifunctional additively manufactured (AM) lattice-based hypersonic vehicle combustor liner heat exchanger is proposed. Previous studies generally investigated conventionally manufactured channel-based concepts for preheating the jet fuel while actively cooling the walls of the combustion chamber. Improved structural, fluid, and thermal performance is explored in the current work through a stretch-dominated graded tessellation of a tetrahedral unit cell that forms both the load-bearing and heat transfer components. The proposed lattice concept will exploit metal AM technologies to fabricate a performance optimized and lightweight structure. The present study is purely computational, relying on computational fluid dynamics and finite element structural analyses to assess the thermal-fluidic and structural performances of the lattice structure and laying the groundwork for future optimization, additive manufacturing, and experimental studies. The challenges in multi-physics simulations as well as the performance gains of lattice structures over traditional heat exchanger design approaches will be presented.