TY - JOUR
T1 - Modeling Thermal Regulation in Thin Vascular Systems: A Mathematical Analysis
AU - Nakshatrala , Kalyana B.
JO - Communications in Computational Physics
VL - 4
SP - 1035
EP - 1068
PY - 2023
DA - 2023/05
SN - 33
DO - http://doi.org/10.4208/cicp.OA-2022-0240
UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/cicp/21668.html
KW - Thermal regulation, vascular systems, reduced-order modeling, maximum and comparison principles, mathematical analysis, efficiency.
AB - <p style="text-align: justify;">Mimicking vascular systems in living beings, designers have realized microvascular composites to achieve thermal regulation and other functionalities, such
as electromagnetic modulation, sensing, and healing. Such material systems avail circulating fluids through embedded vasculatures to accomplish the mentioned functionalities that benefit various aerospace, military, and civilian applications. Although heat
transfer is a mature field, control of thermal characteristics in synthetic microvascular
systems via circulating fluids is new, and a theoretical underpinning is lacking. What
will benefit designers are predictive mathematical models and an in-depth qualitative
understanding of vascular-based active cooling/heating. So, the central focus of this
paper is to address the remarked knowledge gap. First, we present a reduced-order
model with broad applicability, allowing the inlet temperature to differ from the ambient temperature. Second, we apply mathematical analysis tools to this reduced-order
model and reveal many heat transfer properties of fluid-sequestered vascular systems.
We derive point-wise properties (minimum, maximum, and comparison principles)
and global properties (e.g., bounds on performance metrics such as the mean surface
temperature and thermal efficiency). These newfound results deepen our understanding of active cooling/heating and propel the perfecting of thermal regulation systems.</p>