Transverse Thermoelectricity in Fibrous Composite Materials

Bosen Qian and Fei Ren
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Bosen Qian: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA
Fei Ren: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 7, 1-11

Abstract: Transverse thermoelectric elements have the potential to decouple the electric current and the heat flow, which could lead to new designs of thermoelectric devices. While many theoretical and experimental studies of transverse thermoelectricity have focused on layered structures, this work examines composite materials with aligned fibrous inclusions. A simplified mathematical model was derived based on the Kirchhoff Circuit Laws (KCL), which were used to calculate the equivalent transport properties of the composite structures. These equivalent properties, including Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, and thermal conductivity, compared well with finite element analysis (FEA) results. Peltier cooling performance was also examined using FEA, which exhibited good agreement to KCL model predictions. In addition, a survey was conducted on selected combinations of thermoelectric materials and metals to rank their transverse thermoelectricity with respect to the dimensionless figure of merit.

Keywords: transverse thermoelectricity; composite materials; fiber inclusion; Peltier cooling; Seebeck coefficient; electrical conductivity; thermal conductivity; figure of merit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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