Design Methodology for Electrocaloric Cooling Systems

摘要

For over a decade now, the electrocaloric effect (ECE) and electrocaloric (EC) cooling have been the subject of increasing research activities. Research on electrocaloric materials (ECM) is quite advanced; however, significant progress on EC cooling systems is still missing. Therefore, a methodological approach for the structured development of EC cooling systems is presented here. It is based on the well-known V-Model and integrates different tools, as a classification of device types, influencing factors, and numerical simulation methods. The methodology can be used to structure development processes and to identify favorable geometrical and operating parameters of an EC cooling device. The methodology is validated with a demonstrator, which is designed, built, and practically tested for over 2000h. With this small-scale device and a low electrical field strength of 3kVmm(-1), a temperature span of over 1.1K could be achieved.