Abstract
Thermoelastic cooling, also known as elastocaloric cooling, is one alternative cooling technology aiming to reduce the use of global warming potential refrigerants in vapor compression cycles. The cooling is based on the latent heat associated with the martensitic phase change induced by stress in shape memory alloys, driven by either compression or tension. A few past studies have explored and proposed the cycle options and system setup of a compressive thermoelastic cooling system using nitinol tubes as working material. The system coefficient of performance (COP) and cooling capacity were predicted by a dynamic model based on the physics of the integrated complicated heat transfer process and martensitic phase change. This study aims to start the performance improvement studies via optimization using the model. The objective function of the optimization problem is COP. Design variables include a few important operating parameters, such as flow rates and cycle frequency. The previously developed dynamic model is used to evaluate the system performance for this study. It is estimated that the COP enhancement can be as large as 51% from the baseline design candidate. Finally, an updated performance improvement potential is presented to guide future studies.