Study of thermo-fluidic characteristics for geometric-anisotropy Kagome truss-cored lattice

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive comparison of the thermal insulation and heat transfer performance for Kagome truss-cored lattice along two perpendicular orientations OA and OB. Three test conditions are conducted under forced air convection for the titanium sandwich panel fabricated by 3D printing technology. The thermo-fluidic characteristics are further explored by numerical simulation to reveal the underlying mechanisms of heat transfer enhancement. The results indicate that the orientation OB exhibits better thermal insulation than orientation OA under the identical temperature loading, while the latter outperforms the former by up to 20% higher overall heat transfer performance. In particular, the endwalls and lattice core in orientation OA achieve 9.7% and 22.5% higher area-averaged Nusselt number respectively than that in orientation OB for a given Reynolds number. The heat transfer superiority of orientation OA comes from the unique topology which induces the large scale spiral primary flows, facilitating the heat exchange between the cooling air and the surfaces of sandwich panel. However, the complex flow mixing leads to a maximum of 20% higher friction factor in orientation OA than that in orientation OB.