Constructal Design of Rectangular Conjugate Cooling Channels

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Date
2013
Authors
Bello-Ochende, T.
Olakoyejo, O.T.
Meyer, J.P.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
The new trend in modern heat transfer for thermal performance is shape and geometric optimisation. Constructal theory and design, ideally, have been adopted as an optimisation technique for the development of a procedure that is sufficiently allocating and optimising a fixed global space constraint using physical law. This work presents a three dimensional geometric optimisation of a conjugate cooling channel in forced convection with an internal heat generation within the solid for a rectangular configuration. The configuration was optimised in such a way that the peak temperature was minimised subject to the constraint of fixed global volume of solid material. The cooling fluid is driven through the channels by the pressure difference across the channel. The structure has channel height, width and channel to channel spacing as degrees of freedom as design variables. The shape of the channel is allowed to morph to determine the best configuration that gives the lowest thermal resistance. A gradient-based optimisation algorithm is applied in order to search for the best optimal geometric configurations that improve thermal performance by minimising thermal resistance for a wide range of dimensionless pressure difference. This optimiser adequately handles the numerical objective function obtained from CFD simulations. The effect of porosities, applied pressure difference and heat generation rate on the optimal aspect ratio and channel to channel spacing are reported. Results obtained show that the effects of dimensionless pressure drop on minimum thermal resistance are consistent with those obtained in the open literature.
Description
Keywords
Constructal theory , Dynamic-Q , Peak temperature , Optimisation , Thermal resistance , Research Subject Categories::TECHNOLOGY
Citation
Bello-Ochende, T. Olakoyejo, O.T. Meyer, J.P. (2013). Constructal Design of Rectangular Conjugate Cooling Channels