Energy change to insertion of inclusions associated with a diffusive/convective steady‐state heat conduction problem

Abstract

The topological derivative concept has been successfully applied in many relevant physics and engineering problems. In particular, the topological asymptotic analysis has been fully developed for a wide range of problems modeled by partial differential equations. In this paper, the topological asymptotic analysis of the energy shape functional associated with a diffusive/convective steady‐state heat equation is developed. The topological derivative with respect to the nucleation of a circular inclusion is derived in its closed form with help of a non‐standard adjoint state. Finally, we provide the estimates for the remainders of the topological asymptotic expansion and perform a complete mathematical justification for the derived formulas. The obtained result is new and can be applied in the context of topology design of heat sinks, for instance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.