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| Energy conversion efficiency and Mechanical properties of thermoelectric composites with hollow fibers |
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Abstract Hollow fibers are often used in the design of thermoelectric composites structures. The presence of hollow fibers usually leads to an inhomogeneous temperature field in corresponding thermoelectric materials and local stress concentration near the fibers, which threatens the reliability of the thermoelectric materials and may eventually cause their failure. In this paper, the hollow fiber is simulated as a annular inclusion. The energy conversion efficiency and mechanical response of a thermoelectric matrix with a hollow fiber under remote current and energy flow are studied. Analytical solutions for the thermoelectric field and stress field in the composite are obtained, in the case of fully coupled nonlinear thermoelectric constitutive equations, by using the complex variable formalism and the series expansion method. The effects of the conductivity and geometric parameters of the hollow fiber on the temperature distribution, stress field and thermoelectric conversion efficiency are discussed in numerical results. It is shown that the stress around the interface increases with the inner radius of hollow fiber and interface thermal resistance, whilst the stress distribution keeps the same. In addition, it is found that the geometric parameters can have a more significant effort on the temperature field and stress field, if compared with the interface thermal resistance.
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Received: 22 October 2021
Published: 17 June 2022
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2022, Vol. 43 
