title: Optimization-based design of a heat flux concentrator.
abstract: To gain control over the diffusive heat flux in a given domain, one needs to engineer a thermal metamaterial with a specific distribution of the generally anisotropic thermal conductivity throughout the domain. Until now, the appropriate conductivity distribution was usually determined using transformation thermodynamics. By this way, only a few particular cases of heat flux control in simple domains having simple boundary conditions were studied. Thermal metamaterials based on optimization algorithm provides superior properties compared to those using the previous methods. As a more general approach, we propose to define the heat control problem as an optimization problem where we minimize the error in guiding the heat flux in a given way, taking as design variables the parameters that define the variable microstructure of the metamaterial. In the present study we numerically demonstrate the ability to manipulate heat flux by designing a device to concentrate the thermal energy to its center without disturbing the temperature profile outside it.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigación de Métodos Computacionales (CIMEC), Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL)/Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Predio CONICET Santa Fe "Dr. Alberto Cassano", Colectora Ruta Nac Nro 168, Km 0, Paraje El Pozo, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina.
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Peralta
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigación de Métodos Computacionales (CIMEC), Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL)/Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Predio CONICET Santa Fe "Dr. Alberto Cassano", Colectora Ruta Nac Nro 168, Km 0, Paraje El Pozo, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina.
authors.forename: Víctor D
authors.initials: VD
authors.lastname: Fachinotti
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigación de Métodos Computacionales (CIMEC), Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL)/Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Predio CONICET Santa Fe "Dr. Alberto Cassano", Colectora Ruta Nac Nro 168, Km 0, Paraje El Pozo, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina.
authors.forename: Ángel A
authors.initials: ÁA
authors.lastname: Ciarbonetti