FURI | Summer 2020

Design and Optimization of Hybrid Fuel with Complex Bioinspired Geometries for Controllable Combustion Efficiency

More than 539 million tons of coal are consumed to generate energy each year. Due to the fabrication limitation, there is little research on the relation of combustion efficiency and geometric shape of coal briquette. Nowadays, 3D printing enables the fabrication of objects with complex microstructures. This research is motivated to design the lightweight, high strength, and energy output 3D coal briquette with bioinspired microstructures. The Layered Depth Normal Imaging (LDNI) approach was used to design 3D coal briquette with bioinspired microlattice structures. The governing equation regarding the porosity was generated and the bioinspired microstructure was further optimized.