A Method for Geometry Optimization in a Simple Model of Two-Dimensional Heat Transfer

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel boundary-integral based method for optimizing the shape of cooling elements in 2D heat transfer models, improving efficiency and accuracy in PDE-constrained shape optimization.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient boundary-integral approach for shape gradient evaluation in PDE-constrained optimization, avoiding grid adaptation.

Findings

The method accurately computes shape gradients without grid adaptation.

Optimized contours exhibit nontrivial, effective shapes.

Validation confirms the approach's efficiency and accuracy.

Abstract

This investigation is motivated by the problem of optimal design of cooling elements in modern battery systems. We consider a simple model of two-dimensional steady-state heat conduction described by elliptic partial differential equations and involving a one-dimensional cooling element represented by a contour on which interface boundary conditions are specified. The problem consists in finding an optimal shape of the cooling element which will ensure that the solution in a given region is close (in the least squares sense) to some prescribed target distribution. We formulate this problem as PDE-constrained optimization and the locally optimal contour shapes are found using a gradient-based descent algorithm in which the Sobolev shape gradients are obtained using methods of the shape-differential calculus. The main novelty of this work is an accurate and efficient approach to the evaluation of the shape gradients based on a boundary-integral formulation which exploits certain analytical properties of the solution and does not require grids adapted to the contour. This approach is thoroughly validated and optimization results obtained in different test problems exhibit nontrivial shapes of the computed optimal contours.