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This study aims to computational numerical simulations to clarify and explore the influences of periodic cellular lattice (PCL) morphological parameters – such as lattice structure topology (simple cubic, body-centered cubic, z-reinforced body-centered cubic [BCCZ], face-centered cubic and z-reinforced face-centered cubic [FCCZ] lattice structures) and porosity value ( ) – on the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the novel trussed fin-and-elliptical tube heat exchanger (FETHX), which has led to a deeper understanding of the superior heat transfer enhancement ability of the PCL structure.

A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is proposed in this paper to provide better understanding of the fluid flow and heat transfer behavior of the PCL structures in the trussed FETHXs associated with different structure topologies and high-porosities. The flow governing equations of the trussed FETHX are solved by the CFD software ANSYS CFX® and use the Menter SST turbulence model to accurately predict flow characteristics in the fluid flow region.

The thermal-hydraulic performance benchmarks analysis – such as field synergy performance and performance evaluation criteria – conducted during this research successfully identified demonstrates that if the high porosity of all PCL structures decrease to 92%, the best thermal-hydraulic performance is provided. Overall, according to the obtained outcomes, the trussed FETHX with the advantages of using BCCZ lattice structure at 92% porosity presents good thermal-hydraulic performance enhancement among all the investigated PCL structures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first in the literature that provides thorough thermal-hydraulic characteristics of a novel trussed FETHX with high-porosity PCL structures.

This study aims to analyse the non-linear losses of a porous media (stack) composed by parallel plates and inserted in a resonator tube in oscillatory flows by proposing numerical correlations between pressure gradient and velocity.

The numerical correlations origin from computational fluid dynamics simulations, conducted at the microscopic scale, in which three fluid channels representing the porous media are taken into account. More specifically, for a specific frequency and stack porosity, the oscillating pressure input is varied, and the velocity and the pressure-drop are post-processed in the frequency domain (Fast Fourier Transform analysis).

It emerges that the viscous component of pressure drop follows a quadratic trend with respect to velocity inside the stack, while the inertial component is linear also at high-velocity regimes. Furthermore, the non-linear coefficient b of the correlation ax + bx² (related to the Forchheimer coefficient) is discovered to be dependent on frequency. The largest value of the b is found at low frequencies as the fluid particle displacement is comparable to the stack length. Furthermore, the lower the porosity the higher the Forchheimer term because the velocity gradients at the stack geometrical discontinuities are more pronounced.

The main novelty of this work is that, for the first time, non-linear losses of a parallel plate stack are investigated from a macroscopic point of view and summarised into a non-linear correlation, similar to the steady-state and well-known Darcy–Forchheimer law. The main difference is that it considers the frequency dependence of both Darcy and Forchheimer terms. The results can be used to enhance the analysis and design of thermoacoustic devices, which use the kind of stacks studied in the present work.