Enhanced Pool Boiling Heat Transfer with Porous Ti-6Al-4V-Coatings Produced by Cold Spray Metal Additive Manufacturing

In advancing industrial heat transfer mechanisms, surface coatings offer significant potential. This research elucidates the efficacy of the metal additive manufacturing Cold Spray deposition technique for producing enhanced boiling surfaces, specifically focusing on Ti-6Al-4V (Ti64) coatings on Aluminium substrates. This offers a rapid and low-cost fabrication method for producing lightweight enhanced boiling surfaces. The Cold Spray method is typically used to create dense metal deposits. Here, the process has been specially tuned to create highly inhomogeneous honeycomb-type porous Ti64 coatings. Critical Cold Spray deposition parameters, such as particle velocity, preheat temperature, and deposition rate have been identified to create repeatable porous coatings, with thicknesses of up to 3.0 mm achievable. Following deposition, several samples were subjected to systematic boiling heat transfer tests in a purpose-built pool boiling apparatus. Boiling curves were generated for the augmented Cold Spray surfaces as well as a bare surface, with the latter acting as a baseline to which enhancement levels were assessed. Initial data analysis shows that some of the tested surfaces exhibit a notable increase in boiling heat transfer coefficient and Critical Heat Flux (CHF). This enhancement is potentially attributed to increased surface area, increased nucleation site density, capillary wicking, and mitigation of lateral bubble coalescence, though excessive coating thickness may degrade heat transfer. In summary, the novel Ti64 surface structures developed using the Cold Spray deposition technique exhibits high potential for industries necessitating superior boiling heat transfer performance. Importantly, the manufacturing process is industrially scalable, offering the capacity to rapidly coat large areas at low cost compared with subtractive manufacturing other metal additive manufacturing methods.