Krishna Kota
New Mexico State University
A cryocooler’s performance is strongly dependent on its heat exchanger performance, which is directly proportional to its size. In other words, a high-performance cryocooler is feasible but with the penalty of a prohibitively large and bulky heat exchanger. This work aims to study an unexploited fundamental flow phenomenon for the flow of fluids through wavy channels and use this science to design and optimize wavy channels for realizing compact cryogenic heat exchangers. The wavy channels can be embedded in the current or future cryogenic heat exchanger designs and provide a vast scalability and modularity scope. The new flow phenomenon will be studied and optimized using analytical and computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer models. Additive manufacturing will be pursued to build two optimized wavy channels intended for use in cryocoolers operating at 90 K and 20 K, respectively. The wavy channels will be tested in the PI’s laboratory to demonstrate the feasibility and proof of concept. The new flow phenomenon can be used to reduce the size or enhance the performance of thermal management systems and heat exchangers in numerous applications such as spacecraft electronics, satellites, data centers, automobiles, and energy systems.