The influence of temperature dependent fluid properties on topology optimization of conjugate heat transfer

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of temperature dependent (TD) fluid properties on the topology optimization of conjugate heat transfer. The density-based method is used to study the topology optimization problem, in which the Brinkman penalty model and heat transfer equation are solved for fluid analysis and heat transfer analysis respectively. The optimization objective is to minimize the root mean square (RMS) of the temperature and the fluid flow dissipated power. During optimizing process, functions of material TD properties are introduced to demonstrate the coupling between fluid flow and heat transfer caused by non-isothermal flow. Comparative numerical experiments with TD fluid properties and temperature independent (TI) fluid properties are performed. Through numerical examples and experimental verification, it is shown that TD fluid properties will cause different topology optimization result and affect the heat dissipation capacity, in which the influence cannot be neglected in topology optimization studies.