Multiscale topology optimization of cellular structures with high thermal conductivity and large convective surface area

Abstract

Cellular structures have excellent thermal performance due to their high specific surface areas and porosities. This paper proposes a multiscale topology optimization (MTO) method of cellular structures with high thermal conductivity and large convective surface area, which enables them to have rapid cooling capability. In the MTO of a cellular structure, the triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) lattices are adopted and Kriging metamodels are constructed to predict their effective thermal conductivity tensors and surface areas. The thermal compliance of the cellular structure is firstly minimized under the given volume constraint by topology optimization. Then, maximizing the convective surface area of the cellular structure is considered as the objective to when imposing the optimized thermal compliance as the constraint. After conducting topology optimization, the cellular structure with high thermal conductivity and large convective surface area is achieved. Additionally, in the above MTO, isogeometric analysis (IGA) is employed to improve the accuracy of numerical analysis. A numerical example is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. By both simulation and experiment, the high thermal conductivity, large convective surface area and rapid cooling capability of the optimized cellular structure are verified.