A paradigm shift for the future’s thermal management devices through radical innovation in new materials and additive manufacturing
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Collaboration: | Trinity College Dublin: Jožef Stefan Institute: Polytechnic University of Milan: University of Barcelona: |
Description:
As the cooling system becomes a major cause of burden to the environment (reaching 40% of the energy usage) in data centers, overcoming obstacles by enhancing the cooling efficiency based on new technology will be the key to solving the growing issues. Recently, there have been significant innovations in material processing, such as additive manufacturing, and the development of new composite materials enriched by 2D materials (e.g., graphene and h-BN). These advancements have gathered great attention in view of their potential for enabling technical breakthroughs in design flexibility and enhanced heat transfer for thermal management systems.
Based on these technological possibilities, we will develop an innovative thermal management system in the ‘ThermoDust’ project. This will include introducing new types of composite systems based on metals to which 2D materials are added. These composite materials can be universally printed using additive manufacturing and demonstrate significantly enhanced thermal conductivity compared to currently existing materials.
To achieve excellent performance in 3D-printed heat transport devices, 1. We will first focus on the development of 2D materials-based additive manufacturable powder materials, with a comprehensive understanding of the thermophysical properties of these materials. 2. The prepared powders will be printed using various additive manufacturing techniques such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), cold spraying (CS), and binder jetting (BJ). These printing processes will be accompanied by proper thermal-mechanical-microstructural characterizations and numerical modeling. 3. Lastly, the industrially scalable thermal management systems will be implemented in various industrial sectors including electronic cooling, automotive, and aerospace heat transport systems.
Work will proceed toward experimental research as well as computational modeling of aspects of the new composite materials. This enables new mathematical methods and models to be developed and applied, as well as a careful validation of the approach through comparison with experimental findings.
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