Thermal Analysis and Modeling

Effective cooling is a critical challenge for improving the performance, safety, and reliability of IT equipment, electrochemical energy devices and thermal storage systems. The tremendous growth of power consumption in electronic equipment demands innovative solutions to meet new challenges of thermal management and the storage and release of green energy rely greatly on the conduction, convective, and radiative heat transfer process. No doubt thermal management will play a vital role in advancing many future engineering applications.

The thermal energy cluster mainly focuses on the thermal energy transport, management, and conversion. This cluster can perform thermal analysis and modeling using various analytical tools, including finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. We also develop experimental apparatus for thermal management and energy conversion applications. One key research area in the thermal energy cluster is unsteady conjugate thermal management. It is envisaged a step change to many existing thermal management applications can be realized by optimizing both in time and space domain. We also aim at enhanced energy conversion efficiency by integrating system design and new materials, especially for systems related to solar energy.