Case Study: Cobra Aero achieves a lighter, more efficient air-cooled UAV engine cylinder with nTopology

Cobra Aero Reimagines the Air-Cooled Combustion Engine Cylinder using Field Driven Design

Cobra Aero, a U.S. UAV engine manufacturer, needed to reimagine its air-cooled combustion-engine cylinder to hit strict weight and thermal-performance targets while leveraging a newly acquired DMLS capability. Working with nTopology, Cobra Aero set out to replace conventional fins with a manufacturable lattice heat-exchanger that could meet lightweighting, thermal, and producibility requirements.

Using nTopology’s field-driven design, simulation, and slicing tools, Cobra Aero fed multiphysics results (temperature, airflow, pressure drop, stresses) into a spatially varying lattice generation workflow, exported a CLI for the Renishaw AM500, and consolidated six parts into one AlSi10MG component. The nTopology-enabled solution produced a 420 g cylinder with 50% less wasted material, validated performance across RPM and load cases (requiring less airflow to maintain temperature), simplified manufacturing, and met all engineering specifications.

Cobra Aero

Sean Hilbert

President