Thermal Design, 2nd Edition

1Introduction

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Thermal design is a branch of engineering design, a counterpart to machine design, typically involving energy, fluid flow, thermodynamics, and heat transfer. Traditionally, thermal design has been developed as thermal system design, which deals with modeling, simulation, and optimization, and proper selection of the components. It typically avoids the design of the components themselves [1–7]. The components could be pumps, fans, heat exchangers, and refrigeration units, for example. This forms a definite field of thermal design with a great deal of industrial applications. However, often the traditional system design cannot meet the needs of a radically changing technology. For example, traditional fan‐cooling methods of electronics in computers no longer meet today's formidable heat duty. Today, every laptop computer has heat‐pipe cooling systems. Traditional refrigeration units are too large and noisy for small systems. These are typically replaced by thermoelectric coolers, which have no moving parts and are easily controlled by electric power. A compact heat exchanger in a fuel cell is an essential component because of its high efficiency. Since it is not independent of the system, it should be custom designed to meet the requirements and the constraints of the system. Solar cells require compact and efficient coolers. As a result, a new concept of thermal design with the component design of the novel devices briefly addressed becomes inevitable ...