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Our current research is mainly focussed on the design and manufacture of the novel pre-coolers required for the SABRE engine.
These heat exchangers have a mass of 1250 kg and are designed to transfer about 400 MW of heat at Mach 5. Their lightweight design is able to cope with thermal expansions and withstand the inertial and aerodynamic loads experienced during flight.
The construction of these heat exchangers pushes manufacturing technology in a number of areas such as:
- The drawing of matrix tubes in heat-resisting nickel based alloys ensuring correct wall thickness and diameter.
- Brazing heat exchanger tubes to headers.
- Machining of heat exchanger tubes to give a profiled (non-constant) wall thickness to ensure good heat exchange properties without compromising physical strength.
- Hole drilling.
- Tube forming without ovalisation or wall thinning/buckling.
- The assembly of large heat exchanger modules incorporating thousands of tubes.
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