A study on heatsink fin wave optimization for climate control seat

Abstract

This research optimizes a heatsink fin wave that improves the cooling and heating efficiency in a Climate control seat (CCS). The design of existing CCS considers the occupant’s pressure, duct shape, blower blade shape, blower cogging torque, and mesh nozzles. However, the heatsink fin wave shape is overlooked in spite of its outstanding thermal efficiency. To address such problems, this research optimized the shape of the heatsink by defining the wave pitch, height pitch, and fin pitch. Parametric analysis (PA) was used such that the effective decision of the variables could be selected within each range of the variances. As a result, the cooling and the heating system operated more efficiently and the time required to reach the target temperature was reduced when compared to the existing system. The performance of the CCS was demonstrated by simulations and experiments.