A Fundamental Study of Heat Transfer Phenomenon in Periodic Structures

Ever increasing demand from structures makes them to work more in adverse environments. For example, engine components in high performance, high speed new aircrafts are being exposed to much higher temperatures than those in old aircrafts, in different control devices the continuous trend to pack more transistors on a single chip have resulted in an unprecedented level of power dissipation, and therefore higher temperatures at the chip level. Thermal phenomena can adversely affect the performance of these structures. In this project it is investigated whether by designing periodic structures it is possible to manipulate heat transfer directions – increasing heat transfer intensity in one direction while decreasing it in another direction. Such non-uniform heat transfer mechanism utilizing clever design of the periodicity will be useful in designing heat sensitive components. It is shown through numerical analysis that periodicity in structures can steer away the radiation heat energy from its usual propagation direction, thus reducing the energy in one direction while increasing it in another direction. Therefore, structural periodicity can be used to our advantage to manipulate heat propagation directions. Such engineered structures can be used in heat sensitive devices to have more desirable heat transfer characteristics.