Lightweight 3D-printed heaters: design and applicative versatility

•Efficient electrothermal heating elements of printed ABS-CNT were produced.•3D-printed heaters were successfully integrated into plat and curved panels.•Temperature achieved by the heaters was numerically predicted by FEM analysis.•Geometry optimization led to a flexible and scalable lightweight 3D-printed heater. This paper proposes a new strategy for designing a 3D-printed heater that can overcome some criticalities of current commercial heater devices for application in the transport and energy sectors. A semiconductive nanocomposite material, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene filled with carbon nanotubes (ABS-CNT), was processed via Fused Filaments Fabrication (FFF). The printing was set to favor the current flow along the printing direction, consequently increasing the material's electrical conductivity. 3D-printed heater geometry, equivalent to several electrical resistances (resistive branches) connected in parallel, was optimized by varying the width, thickness, lengths, and number of branches. The adopted approach resulted in a flexible and scalable low-equivalent resistance value heater. Moreover, the optimized heater's flexibility allows it to be integrated into a curved fiberglass composite. Joule heating tests were experimentally performed and theoretically simulated by a multi-physics model. The numerical prediction resulted in good agreement with the experimental data. The results encourage the application of 3D-printed heaters as functional patches for the thermal management of different devices/components, including complex-shape composite structures.