Baffle Generation

Going to minimize these blocks, open up our CAD plus solid bodies, turn on the shell, and we’ll look at a quick cross-section. I’ll hit X to enable the cross-section, and I’m going to change the plane normal from 0 0 1 to 0 1 Z. Now we can look inside. Go and turn on the top dome, the oil inlet, and the outlet pipes as well. So now we can imagine that if we our hot oil, we’re coming in at this point, we would enter both the hot and cold domains of the hex core.

So the next step is going to be to generate what we call baffles or barriers that we use to prevent the two fluids from mixing. Before we do this, we’ll minimize the C solid bodies and hex core and fluid generation sections. We’ll make a new one called baffle generation. Go ahead and close the cross section.

In order to make our baffles, we’ll use the Shell block. We’re still under the modeling tab, so we can select it from here or search for it. And I’m going to change the direction type to outward. Then I’m going to make this a variable so I’ll right click, make variable. I’m going to use this specific block a few more times, and I know I’m going to want the same baffle thickness for each of them. So I’ll go ahead and make this a variable, and I’ll call this baffle thickness.

Generally, we’re going to want our baffles to be at a minimum the thickness of our TPMS structure or slightly a little thicker. So I’m going to come in here, I’m going to say multiply. I’m going to start to type multiply out, I’ll select this. And I’m going to open up the hex core and fluids real quick, and under our TPMS thickness, we’ll select the Block Details under the properties. We’ll find this constant value, so I’ll drag the constant into operand A. And I’m going to make this, let’s say, 25% larger than our TPMS thickness. So my baffle thickness will always be a little bit larger. And now if I change my TPMS thickness, this will change accordingly.

We’ll minimize the hex core, and then I’m going to duplicate or copy this Shell block three more times so we have a total of four. You can right click, say duplicate, or a quicker method is to Control+C and then hit Control+V three times. We’ll rename each of these variables. We’ll call this first one hot Inlet baffle volume. Going to Control+A, Control+C, Control+V into the next name. Rename this to outlet baffle volume. This one will be cold Inlet baffle volume, and the last is going to be cold Outlet baffle volume.

All we’re going to do now, and I’ll come up to the CAD fluid bodies, I’ll select sidewall plenum, and we’ll isolate this. All we’re going to do is take these objects and shell them outwards. So the sidewall plenum will come into here. And if we turn this visibility on and look at a quick cross-section, all we’ve done is quickly shell that object. Do the same thing for the next three. The hot Outlet baffle is going to be our hot Outlet fluid. The cold Inlet baffle volume will be the bottom plenum, and the top Dome fluid is going to be the cold Outlet baffle volume. We can turn each of these on, and again, all we’ve done is shell those.

The next operation is going to be a Boolean intersect, and we’re going to intersect them with the fluid domains to prevent the fluids from mixing. We’ll minimize these shell bodies, and I’m going to select Boolean Intersect. Before I copy and paste it three times, I’m going to make it a variable so I only have to do that once. Control+C and Control+V and get four of these. This first one I’ll call Hot Inlet baffle, and do the same thing for hot Outlet baffle. This will be cold Inlet baffle, and this bottom one cold Outlet baffle.

Now we’re going to intersect the baffle volumes with the opposite fluid domain. So this hot Inlet baffle we’re going to intersect with a cold fluid domain so that they don’t mix. And we’ll do the same thing for the next ones as well. So hot Outlet baffle volume cold fluid, and just drag and drop each of these into their respective inputs.

We’ll isolate each of these baffles that we just created. And I like to give these baffles the opposite color of the fluid or the fluid that I’m preventing from mixing. So in this case, I’ll give it a blue color for the hot baffles and a warmer red color for the cold baffles. We’ll minimize these, close our cross-section. We can turn on our hex core and see all we’re doing is fitting in a small section that is in this case 65 millimeters thick within the structure to prevent the fluids from mixing.