Environmental Response of 2D Thermal Cloak under Dynamic External Temperature Field.

Abstract

As a typical representative of transformation thermodynamics, which is the counterpart of transformation optics, the thermal cloak has been explored extensively while most current research focuses on the structural design instead of adaptability and practicability in a dynamic environment. The evaluation of energy processes involved in the thermal cloak under dynamic conditions are also lacking, which is essential to the engineering application of this functional structure. In this paper, based on the dynamic environment of a sinusoidal form with ambient amplitude, distribution density, phase, and temperature difference as variables, we evaluated the cloaking performance and environmental response of a 2D thermal cloak. Considering the heat dissipation and energy loss in the whole procedure, local entropy production rate and response entropy were introduced to analyze the different influences of each environmental parameter on the cloaking system. Moreover, we constructed a series of comprehensive schemes to obtain the fitting equation as well as an appropriate scope to apply the thermal cloak. The results are beneficial to the novel use of the concept of entropy and valuable for further improving the working efficiency and potential engineering applications of the thermal cloak.