Research on Sound Transmission Characteristics of Shell-And-Tube Heat Exchangers Based on TPMS Structures

To fully exploit the acoustic regulation potential of shell-and-tube heat exchangers, this paper proposes a novel heat exchanger design in which the conventional heat exchange tubes are replaced by triply periodic minimal surface structures. The acoustic transmission characteristics of the TPMS-structured heat exchangers were systematically investigated using the finite element method. Four different types of TPMS heat exchanger models—Gyroid, Schwarz P, Split P, and Schwarz D—were constructed, with a focus on analyzing the influence of key parameters such as unit cell type, unit cell size, and volume fraction on their transmission loss characteristics and acoustic transmission capability. It was found that the effects of these parameters on the acoustic transmission characteristics differ significantly between the 100~1600 Hz and 1700~3000 Hz frequency bands. Based on this, the simulation results of the four TPMS heat exchangers were further compared with experimental data from a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. The results show that in a water medium, the sound insulation performance of the Schwarz P type TPMS heat exchanger is comparable to that of the conventional shell-and-tube heat exchanger below 1600 Hz, whereas it improves significantly above 1600 Hz, with an overall transmission loss of up to 78.49 dB. The findings of this study provide valuable theoretical insights for the development of compact underwater heat exchangers with excellent acoustic performance.