Temperature-constrained topology optimization of thermo-mechanical coupled problems

ABSTRACT

Temperature-constrained topology optimization for thermo-mechanical coupled problems under a design-dependent temperature field considering the thermal expansion effect remains an open problem. A temperature-constrained topology optimization method is proposed for thermo-mechanical coupled problems. In this article, the temperature values at the heat sources are constrained. The numerical results reveal that the temperature constraints play an important role in topology optimization of thermo-mechanical coupled problems. The optimized structure obtained by the presented method not only has certain strength but also decreases the temperature significantly compared with structures obtained by other methods without considering temperature constraints. The proposed method is applied to the design of the cooling system of a battery package. Numerical examples verify the efficiency of the presented method.

KEYWORDS:

• Temperature-constrained topology optimization
• thermo-mechanical coupled problems
• structural optimization
• heat transfer

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Professor Krister Svanberg of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, for the method-of-moving-asymptotes (MMA) algorithm used in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [nos. 11872015 and 51775025]; and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [no. DUT18JC47].