TCCbuilder: an Open-Source Tool for the Design and Evaluation of Thermal Circuits in Calorics and Other Applications

Thermal management as control of the temperature, as well as the intensity and the direction of heat flow between components of a system, is crucial for high energy efficiency, optimized performance, high reliability, and safety. Thermal management is also the key challenge of modern technology in the whole energy chain: energy production, conversion, transport, and utilization.<br/><br/>It is becoming more and more evident that thermal management methods like conventional thermal resistors (i.e. thermal insulation) and capacitors (i.e. thermal storage) cannot meet thermal control requirements of advanced, especially small-scale systems with higher power densities or potentially transient, fluctuating, or migrating hot or cold spots, as well as for temperature-sensitive equipment. The newly emerging thermal control devices (TCDs), including thermal conduits, thermal resistors, thermal switches, thermal regulators, thermal diodes, and thermal capacitors, allow nonlinear, switchable, and active control of the heat, just as their electrical counterparts control the electrical current.<br/><br/>We wanted to take a step forward in the development of these novel thermal management techniques, which led us to this project, whose main goal is to provide researchers and broader society with the world’s first open-source numerical tool for simulating thermal control circuits (TCCs). Therefore, we present here the TCCbuilder tool and its associated library – a large database of appropriate materials and TCDs already published in the literature. The tool will also serve as a solid foundation for sharing knowledge in the field of thermal management.<br/><br/>The implementation of nonlinear and switchable TCDs, together with a heat source and a heat sink, forms TCCs and leads to qualitatively better thermal capabilities, including better regulation or stabilization of temperature, rectification, heterodyning, amplification, regulation, redirection, and stabilization of heat flux density, temporary storage of excess heat, heat scavenging, thermal computation, etc. The output of the TCCbuilder will be demonstrated with several examples, where TCDs have been implemented and have improved the operation of conventional devices, e.g. temperature doubler, peak detector, and load shifter.<br/><br/>One of the most important areas of investigation in thermal management are caloric devices. It has already been demonstrated that thermal switches and/or thermal diodes can enable the operation of magnetocaloric, electrocaloric, and elastocaloric devices at higher frequencies. To increase the cooling power density of caloric devices, breakthrough ideas are needed, which can be tested, accepted, or disproved with the TCCbuilder.