Date of Award
12-2011
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Legacy Department
Mechanical Engineering
Committee Chair/Advisor
Ma, Lin
Committee Member
Miller , Richard
Committee Member
Beasley , Donald
Committee Member
Tong , Chenning
Abstract
This work investigates the application of alternative cooling techniques to thermal management. In the first section, this work presents models and extensive simulation studies on an alternative cooling strategy based upon phase change materials (PCMs) for the thermal management system of a LED headlight assembly. These studies have shown that properly chosen PCMs, when suspended in metal foam matrices, increased the thermal conductivity of the PCM. The increased thermal conductivity can enhance the cooling characteristics of a practical thermal management system for a LED headlight system. To further enhance the advantages of using PCMs, nanoparticle enhanced fluids (nanofluids) are desirable as an additional source of cooling. The use of nanofluids motivates the development of a new diagnostic tool for multiphase flows and a minimization algorithm for analyzing the data. For this purpose, the second section of this work develops a new technique that is based on wavelength-multiplexed laser extinction (WMLE) to measure particle sizes in multiphase flows. In the final section of this work, the simulated algorithm (SA) is investigated for analyzing the data collected in this work. Specifically, the parallelization of the SA technique is investigated to reduce the high computational cost associated with the SA algorithm.
Recommended Citation
Ewing, David, "An Investigation of the Application of Phase Change Materials in Practical Thermal Management Systems" (2011). All Dissertations. 820.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/820