Adaptive thermal convective cloak via inverse design

Abstract

Thermal metamaterials, known for their effective and directional heat control and management strategy, have garnered significant attention leading to the investigation of various functional thermal conductive metadevices. Nevertheless, conventional thermal convective metadevices resort to artificial structures in the flow field, which face the challenge of the coupling of heat and mass transfer and unstable flow field. Herein, we report an adaptive strategy for fabricating an active thermal convective cloak via tunable heat gain and loss. Adaptive body and surface heat sources, rather than graded structures inside functional regions, have been demonstrated to be feasible for heat convection. Accompanied by the active manipulation scheme, an inverse design process was constructed to calculate the heat source distributions based on the knowledge of the target temperature fields. The proof-of-concept heat source matrix, using well-laid out resistance heaters and thermoelectric components, experimentally validated the thermal cloaking pattern in the flow field. The active scheme overcomes the limitations of the complex engineered structures required for conventional thermal convective metadevices. Thus, in this study, we establish a new paradigm for thermal convective camouflage and pave the way for active thermal management in heat convection.