Heat transfer efficiency of hierarchical corrugated sandwich panels

As a kind of biomimetic materials, ultralight hierarchical porous structures possessing excellent mechanical properties such as load bearing, impact energy absorption, vibration reduction and noise attenuation have been exploited. Often, these porous structures exhibit continuous flow passages that allow for cooling fluids to pass through, thus enabling simultaneous load-bearing and active heat dissipation. This study investigated the convective cooling efficiency of a sandwich panel with hierarchical corrugated core subjected to heating from the face sheets and active cooling through the core. Built upon the classical fin approach, a theoretical model coupling wall heat conduction and fluid convection in the core was established for the hierarchical corrugated-core sandwich panel, covering the full range of fluid flow (from laminar, transition to turbulent). The theoretical model predictions were validated against full numerical simulations. Based on the theoretical model, an artificial intelligence optimization method (i.e., the ant colony algorithm) was adopted to find the optimal combination of key independent geometric parameters of the sandwich panel for maximized heat transfer performance. For the problem of multi-variables optimization, it was demonstrated that the ant colony algorithm is superior in terms of computational time to the traditional exhaustive search method. For a given pressure drop, a set of optimum geometric parameters corresponding to maximum cooling efficiency was found for the proposed hierarchical corrugated-core sandwich panel.