Growth-Based Design of a Conducting Solid Cooled by Conjugate Gas Conduction and Surface Radiation

A solid growth model (SGM) is developed to identify desirable configurations of a conducting solid that is cooled by conduction through a stagnant gas and surface radiation. Thermal performance is quantified by the overall thermal resistance, as well as a figure of merit that rewards both (i) low thermal resistance and (ii) use of a small amount of solid. The results show that radiation affects both the evolution of the solid shape and the thermal performance. Predictions of the novel SGM are compared to those of a formal topology optimization (TO) method, which incorporates the effects of radiation after the solid shape is determined by considering conduction only. While application of the TO method yields a lower overall thermal resistance when a high solid thermal conductivity is considered, the SGM leads to better thermal performance when a low solid thermal conductivity is involved.