Advancing Elastocaloric Refrigeration through Co-design of Materials and Systems – NASA Early-Stage Innovation (ESI)
PI: P. Shamberger, Co-PI’s: I. Karaman, R. Arroyave, D. Antao
Proposed co-design scheme integrates evaluation of materials performance and system design, unified by irreversible thermodynamic analysis of ECE refrigerants cycles.
The research objectives of this project include:
- Quantify the interactions between 1) intrinsic materials properties, 2) non-ideal aspects of the phase transformation (dThyst, dTwidth), and 3) s-T path for a particular cycle.
- i) Data-enabled design, fabrication, and processing of high-performance ECE material compositions and microstructures that maximize the amount of useful refrigeration work per cycle, ii) validated by multi-scale characterization of their thermal and thermomechanical properties.
- Demonstrate a validated/viable pathway towards a high gravimetric and volumetric cooling power density ECE refrigeration system through design/testing of a multi-zone active regeneration elastocaloric device
These objectives will be accomplished by:
- Evaluate candidate elastocaloric effect (ECE) alloys using irreversible thermodynamic models capable of quantifying materials response (including hysteresis losses) to active regenerative thermal and load cycles,
- Data-enabled materials design of high performance ECE alloy compositions and microstructures based on relevant figures of merit, and
- Co-design of a multi-zone active regenerative elastocaloric effect system to evaluate the interaction between materials properties and system-level performance.