Optimization of a Piezoelectric Fan using Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation

In this paper, the heat transfer from a single heat fin to the air flow in the wake of a piezoelectric fan (piezofan) is optimised. Both the heat fin and the piezofan are positioned in a channel, which has a significant influence on the flow field. The design variable is the frequency of the voltage applied to the piezofan. The heat transfer for different excitation frequencies is calculated using unsteady fluid-structure interaction simulations. To obtain a modular simulation environment, the flow equations and the structural equations are solved separately. However, the equilibrium on the fluid-structure interface is not satisfied automatically in this partitioned approach. Therefore, the interface quasi-Newton technique with an approximation for the inverse of the Jacobian from a least-squares model (IQN-ILS) is used to perform coupling iterations between the flow solver and the structural solver in each time step. With the unsteady fluid-structure interaction model, a surrogate model is constructed. The optimization of the surrogate model yields a frequency close to the first eigenfrequency of the structure.