Design & Validation of a 3D-printed Heat Exchanger Manifold

Metal additive manufacturing has enabled great diversity and design freedom in heat exchanger design. However, these benefits cannot be adequately realised without optimizing its ancillary components as well, specifically the inlet and outlet manifolds. Optimizing the manifolds can significantly improve the flow distribution inside the heat...

Design and analysis adaptivity in multi‐resolution topology optimization

Multiresolution topology optimization (MTO) methods involve decoupling of the design and analysis discretizations, such that a high‐resolution design can be obtained at relatively low analysis costs. Recent studies have shown that the MTO method can be approximately 3 and 30 times faster than the traditional topology optimization method for 2D...

Topology optimization for high-resolution designs: Application in solar cell metallization

Due to global population growth and industrial development, there is a rising demand for energy. It is desired that this demand is met in a cleaner and more sustainable way. Among the various renewable energy sources, solar power is experiencing remarkable growth throughout the world. To ensure that solar power can be a sustainable solution for...

QR-patterns: artefacts in multiresolution topology optimization

Recent multiresolution topology optimization (MTO) approaches involve dividing finite elements into several density cells (voxels), thereby allowing a finer design description compared to a traditional FE-mesh-based design field. However, such formulations can generate discontinuous intra-element material distributions resembling QR-patterns....

CPV solar cell modeling and metallization optimization

Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) has recently gained popularity due to its ability to deliver significantly more power at relatively lower absorber material costs. In CPVs, lenses and mirrors are used to concentrate illumination over a small solar cell, thereby increasing the incident light by several folds. This leads to non-uniform...

Integrated front–rear-grid optimization of free-form solar cells

Free-form solar cells expand solar power beyond traditional rectangular geometries. With the flexibility of being installed on objects of daily use, they allow making better use of available space and are expected to bring in new possibilities of generating solar power in the coming future. In addition, their customizable shape can add to the...

Optimizing front metallization patterns: Efficiency with aesthetics in free-form solar cells

Free-form solar cells are cells of unconventional shapes (e.g. hexagonal, leaf-shaped etc). Their flexible shape adds to the aesthetics of the surroundings as well as allows to place them over objects where conventional solar cells might not fit. Evidently, these cells need to be efficient as well, and one of the important factors that...