Improved Thermal Performance of a Serpentine Cooling Channel by Topology Optimization Infilled with Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces

Abstract

The present study utilizes a density-based topology optimization method to design a serpentine channel under turbulent flow, solving a high pressure loss issue and enhancing heat transfer capability. In the topology optimization, the k–ε turbulence model is modified by adding penalization terms to reveal turbulence effects. Heat transfer modeling is included by setting the modified energy equation with additional terms related to topology optimization. The main objective is to minimize pressure loss while restricting heat transfer. The 2D simplified model is topologically optimized. Then, the optimal solution with intermediate results is extruded in the 3D system and interpreted with triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) to further enhance heat transfer performance. Compared to the baseline serpentine channel, the optimized model infilled with the diamond-TPMS structure lowers pressure loss by 30.8% and significantly enhances total heat transfer by up to 45.8%, yielding thermal performance of 64.8% superior to the baseline. The temperature uniformity is also improved. The simulation results show that the curvatures in the optimized model with diamond-TPMS structure eliminate the large recirculation flow and low heat transfer regions. This model diminishes the effect of Dean’s vortices but promotes high turbulent kinetic energy, leading to better uniform flow and heat transfer distributions.