Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.
In this paper we use two developments to illustrate our
progress in “design with constructal theory” [1]. The first is the
development of smart materials with embedded vasculatures
that provide multiple functionality: volumetric cooling, selfhealing,
enhanced apparent (effective) thermal conductivity,
and mechanical strength. Vascularization is achieved by using
tree-shaped (dendritic) flow architectures. We show that as
length scales become smaller, dendritic vascularization
provides dramatically superior volumetric bathing than the use
of bundles of parallel microchannels. A novel dendritic
architecture has trees that alternate with upside down trees. In
addition to flow access to the entire volume, trees offer
improved robustness in flow operation. The second development
is the distributing of energy systems over a given
territory. The distribution of heating is used as an example.
The architecture emerges from the balancing of the losses
concentrated in the production centers and the losses distributed
along the conduits that distribute and collect every thing that
flows on the landscape. In sum, flow architectures are derived
from principle, in accordance with constructal theory, not by
mimicking nature.
