Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 274
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2016-16274-4

Regular Article

Constructal design for a rectangular body with nonuniform heat generation

¹ Institute of Thermal Science and Power Engineering, Naval University of Engineering, 430033, Wuhan, PRC
² Military Key Laboratory for Naval Ship Power Engineering, Naval University of Engineering, 430033, Wuhan, PRC
³ College of Power Engineering, Naval University of Engineering, 430033, Wuhan, PRC

^* e-mail: lingenchen@hotmail.com

Received: 20 December 2015
Revised: 11 April 2016
Accepted: 7 July 2016
Published online: 11 August 2016

Abstract

Nonuniform heat generation models with constant and variable cross-section high-conductivity channels (HCCs) are built in this paper. The minimum dimensionless peak temperature (DPT) is taken as the optimization objective. Different from the models with uniform heat generation and constant cross-section HCCs built by Bejan (1997) and Ledezma et al. (1997), the model with nonuniform heat generation and variable cross-section HCC is more practical and can help to improve the heat conduction performance of a thermal system. The results show that for the rectangular first-order assembly (RFOA) with nonuniform heat generation, there exist both the optimal shape of the RFOA and the optimal HCCs width ratio, which lead to the minimum DPT. They are different from those with uniform heat generation. When the heat is nonuniformly generated in the RFOA, the minimum DPT of the RFOA with variable cross-section HCC is reduced by 12.11% compared with that with constant cross-section HCC. Moreover, the numerical results are also verified by the analytical method.