Constructal design for H-shaped compound heat transfer path in a rectangular heat generation body

Abstract

An H-shaped compound heat transfer path (HSCHTP) model in a rectangular heat generation body (RHGB) is built in present article. With specified total volumes of HSCHTP and RHGB, constructal design for HSCHTP model is conducted by varying path length ratios and radius. The minimum complex functions composed of thermal and flow performances are acquired, and the multi-objective optimizations are performed furtherly. Three decision-making approaches are introduced to obtain the optimal design scheme (ODS) from Pareto-optimal frontiers. It indicates that complex function after triple-optimization is reduced by 14.7 % compared with that of initial design. Compared with performance of RHGB with no heat conduction path, complex function after optimization is reduced by 77.5 %. Thus, performance of the HSCHTP is apparently superior to that with no heat conduction path in this case. The complex function minimization is a special case of the multi-objective optimization (MOO). The fifth order path radius, adjacent order and internal order length ratios acquired by MOO are distributed within the ranges of 1.50mm-1.60 mm, 1.39–1.47 and 0.066–0.90, respectively. By chasing for the smallest deviation-index, optimal structure of HSCHTP acquired by LINMAP decision-making method is taken for the ODS when multiple requirements are considered in the heat dissipation designs.