A study of optimal cooling strategies in thermal processes

Abstract

Convection is often used as a means for cooling parts in thermal processes. In this paper. we present . a continuous sensitivity equation (CSE) method to assess strategies for enhancing the cooling of a block submersed in a channel of coolant (fluid). A strat- e,gy studied involves introducing a plate into the flow to deflect cooler fluid towards the block. Thus, op- timal design techniques are used at the conceptual design level in order to see if this is a feasible design strate3. Such optimization problems are solved using this CSE coupled with a BFGS/trust-region optimiza- tion algorithm. The CSE. which describes the influ- ence of the design (shape) parameters on the flow: leads to an efficient method for calculating the gra- dient. However. in order to be an effective tool: n-e need to find an estimate of how accurate the func- tion and gradient calculations are. To achier-e this, the coupled flow and sensitivity equations are solved using an adaptive finite element method. Our study includes a numerical verification