I-Corps: Rapid Manufacturing for High Efficiency Heat Exchangers

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是能够更有效地生产类似热交换器的部件（具有复杂的内部几何形状），这些部件目前的制造耗时长，成本高。该项目起源于全3D打印火箭发动机的研究。该项目为大规模生产液体火箭发动机提供了解决方案，从而使发射基础设施更频繁地进入太空。为了满足不断增长的需求所带来的积压，航天工业需要更快的火箭发射速度来将基础设施（如卫星）送入太空。发动机制造技术抑制了运载火箭的生产，这反过来又限制了满足运载火箭行业需求的能力。提供一种快速生产技术来制造大量高效的火箭发动机将使发射成本和生产时间大大减少。快速生产复杂热交换器的商业影响也将允许行业迭代设计并降低工业应用中生产单元的总成本。制造高效率的热交换器可以减少部件尺寸的生产，这可以减少复杂系统的总质量。高效热交换器的工业应用存在于喷气发动机制造、火力发电厂和大型炼油厂制造行业。I-Corps的这个项目改进了传统的发动机制造方法，甚至是新的增材制造方法，通过使用专有技术来快速生产完全再生冷却的发动机。该技术是一种针对最难制造的发动机部件的物理制造和组装过程，与现有方法相比，可将生产时间缩短90%，成本降低80%。两个完全3D打印的火箭发动机已经制造和测试。其中一个3D打印火箭发动机是在探空火箭上发射的，该火箭是为了作为飞行文章而创建的，并验证了迄今为止的工作。第三代引擎将改进传统3D金属打印的高孔隙率、大量后处理步骤以及批量和尺寸生产的可扩展性等缺点。该团队将努力解决传统3D金属打印的缺陷，以实现复杂热交换器的大规模生产。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be to enable more efficient production of heat exchanger-like components (featuring complex internal geometries) that are currently time intensive and costly to manufacture. The project has its origins in fully 3D printed rocket engine research. The project provides a solution for the mass production of liquid rocket engines so that launching infrastructure to space will happen more frequently. In order to meet the backlog from rising demand, the space industry needs a more rapid rate of rocket launches to deliver infrastructure (such as satellites) into space. Engine manufacturing technology has stifled launch vehicle production, which in turn has restricted the ability to meet demand in the launch vehicle industries. Providing a rapid production technique to fabricate large quantities of high efficiency rocket engines will allow launch costs and production time to be reduced significantly. The commercial impact of rapidly producing complex heat exchangers will also allow industries to iterate on designs and decrease total cost for production units in industrial applications. Manufacturing high efficiency heat exchangers allows for decreased component size production which can decrease total mass for complex systems. Industrial applications for high efficiency heat exchangers exist in the jet engine manufacturing, thermal power plant, and large-scale refinery manufacturing industries.This I-Corps project improves upon conventional engine manufacturing methods and even new additive manufacturing methods by using a proprietary technology to quickly produce fully regeneratively cooled engines. The technology is a physical fabrication and assembly process for the hardest-to-manufacture engine components that can decrease production time by 90% and cost by 80%, respectively, compared to current methods. Two fully 3D printed rocket engines have been fabricated and tested. One of the 3D printed rocket engines was launched on a sounding rocket e created to serve as a flight article and validate the work to date. The third-generation engine will improve upon conventional 3D metal printing deficiencies of high porosity, numerous post processing steps, and scalability in both volume and size production. The team will work to address and account for the deficiencies with conventional 3D metal printing to allow for mass production of complex heat exchangers.