Combined Plant and Control Co-Design for Robust Disturbance Rejection in Thermal-Fluid Systems

A significant increase in electrification is driving the need for thermal management systems that are more robust to transient thermal loads. Unfortunately, thermal-fluid systems are typically designed using steady-state assumptions, an approach that often neglects, or constrains, the closed-loop transient performance. To meet the demand for improved thermal management in next-generation systems, new design paradigms are needed. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for co-design of thermal-fluid systems that explicitly targets system efficiency, via entropy generation rate, as a design metric. We leverage a nested co-design architecture to tradeoff nominal (steady-state) efficiency with transient efficiency while also ensuring robustness to highly transient disturbances. The use of highly parameterized nonlinear and linearized first principles models, as opposed to empirical models, enables optimization of a larger set of design variables. We demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach through a simulated case study by comparing it to a conventional design approach.