• UW Graduate Studies
• ME Graduate Studies

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Design, build and test cooling strategies for thin film Thermal Electric Generators with heat loads up to 150 W/cm². The primary objective of the research program is to integrate a system that incorporates technologies that provide an optimized thermal solution by using both novel technologies, such as a pulsating heat pipe or vapor chambers and more proven technologies, such as conventional, wicked heat pipes, and diamond spreaders.

The student will design and build test fixtures to measure the thermal performance of the individual system components to ascertain their effectiveness over a range of design variables expected for power generation. These evaluations studies will include:

1. Property characterization of heat spreaders: potential options for heat spreaders include diamond, copper, graphite, aluminum nitride and pulsating heat pipes. Each of these options will be tested for a range of heat loads between 50 - 150 W/cm² to determine the effect on temperature distribution.
2. Property characterization of wicked heat pipes: the heat transfer potential of commercial heat pipes will be evaluated for various orientations (gravity assisted and non-gravity assisted), heat loads between 50 - 150 W/cm² , mean temperature levels and various contact configurations, including soldered joints, press fit joints and shrink fit joints.
3. Determine optimized conditions for heat spreading with a pulsating heat pipe.

The objectives of this research are to develop electro-mechanical models for Flexinol NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) wire actuators. SMA actuators have some very attractive properties: energy density rivaling those of hydraulics; smooth, silent actuation; reduced part counts compared to traditional alternatives; scalability down to the micro-mechanical level. The primary drawbacks of electrically-heated SMA actuators are low efficiency and low bandwidth.

Modelling of an electrically-heated SMA actuator can typically be decoupled (with the exception of a few non-linear dependencies described below) into a thermo-electric model relating applied current to wire temperature, and a thermo-mechanical model relating temperature and stress to actuator strain, or displacement. The focus of this research will be on thermo-electric modeling of SMA wire actuators, specifically:

1. the non-uniform temperature distribution along the wire and at the wire extremities during transient current flow
2. examine changes in the basic material properties, such as specific heat and resistivity, during the phase transformation
3. develop methods for experimental measurement of wire temperature for model validation

Design, build, test and model micro-channel heat exchangers using nanofluids as the heat transfer fluid. Nanofluids consist of solid nano-particles, with sizes less than 100 nm, suspended in a liquid, with solid volume fractions typically less than 4%. This new class of heat transfer fluid has shown several attractive characteristics including the possibility of obtaining large enhancements (up to 40%) in thermal conductivity and significant increases in the convective heat transfer coefficient. Using commercially available components, a closed-loop cooling system will be constructed to evaluate the potential benefits of this new technology.

The use of open cell metal foams as potential micro-channel media will also be examined. Theoretical models will be developed to predict overall thermal performance of single-phase fluid flow in microchannel heatsinks. The model will account for thermal phenomena involved such as contact resistance at the interface between the heat source and substrate, spreading resistance in the substrate, pressure drop and heat transfer in micro-channels and inlet/outlet ports.