Computer Auxiliary Design Of Thermoelectric Cooling And Power Generation System

The design of thermoelectric cooling and power generation systems is very complicated. A number of parameters and much calculation need to be disposed of sometimes, an optimal data can only be acquired after iterative calculation. Using computer auxiliary design, calculation can go both correctly and promptly and a great deal of parameters are put into database for easy and speedy search and calculation to supply an optimal solution.Based on the analysis and calculation model of thermoelectric cooling and power generation systems, the device and environment was considered as a whole, heat flow between the device and environment, and heat flow between several parts of the device were studied. Therefore, the performance characteristic of the system was optimized. Two optimal models of thermoelectric cooling and power generation systems were established.The software was developed with VB 6.0(Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0)and ActiveX data object(ADO) was used for visiting the database. By the need of users, it not only supplies an optimal solution of thermoelectric coolers from the product database, but also designs thermoelectric coolers on the basis of materials. The software consists of two subprograms : thermoelectric cooling module and power generation module. The thermoelectric cooling module supplies the calculation of heat load, performance characteristic of coolers (current, voltage, cooling efficiency, cooling capacity),heat sinks ; the power generation module supplies performance characteristic of generators. The function of software consists of calculation module,graphic display module,database module,help module. A thermoelectric refrigeration example is given in the paper. We developed a TeM-SMA experimental system, in which the thermoelectric Peltier effect was employed for heating and cooling of SMA rapidly to verify the model and software, and the results given by the software show good consistence with that of experiments.