thermal systems · simulation
Peltier water cooling system
Design & Simulation · Thermal Systems Engineering
Overview
Designed and modeled a thermoelectric cooler (TEC)-based water cooling loop for compact electronics packaging. The project focused on developing a physics-based thermal simulation capable of predicting transient temperature response under variable power loads, enabling system sizing and TEC operating point selection before hardware fabrication.
Approach & methodology
The system was represented as a lumped-mass thermal RC network capturing the dominant heat transfer paths: appliance thermal resistance and capacitance, TEC module coefficient of performance and thermal resistance, heat sink convective resistance, and coolant loop thermal mass. Each node corresponded to a physical component, and the network topology was drawn to match the physical heat flow path from electronics junction through the cold plate, TEC, and heat sink to ambient.
The network was formulated as a system of first-order coupled ODEs. An implicit backward Euler time-stepping scheme was implemented in MATLAB, chosen over explicit methods for unconditional numerical stability, allowing large timesteps without solution divergence under the stiff thermal dynamics of TEC systems. The solver was validated against known steady-state boundary conditions before running transient simulations with variable power input profiles.
Tools & techniques
MATLAB (ODE system formulation, backward Euler implicit solver implementation), lumped-mass thermal RC network modeling, thermoelectric module characterization (Seebeck coefficient, thermal resistance, COP curve), cold plate and heat sink thermal parameter extraction, transient simulation under variable power loads.
Outcomes & results
Delivered a MATLAB simulation tool predicting transient cold plate and junction temperatures under variable power inputs with unconditional numerical stability at large timesteps. Parametric studies identified thermal bottlenecks and evaluated trade-offs between TEC operating current, cold side temperature, and heat sink thermal resistance. Results directly informed component sizing decisions and power requirementsfor the cooling loop design.