Design Optimization of a Miniaturized Thermoelectric Generator

Miniaturized thermoelectric generator (TEG) can be utilized to harvest the thermal energy from temperature gradients inside human body. In this way, it could function as a power supply for electrically active implants. In this paper, we present an optimization strategy for TEG based on replacing the detailed device model by a dummy one. In this way, the geometrical array configuration of the thermocouples is modified by parameterizing the equivalent thermal conductivity of the dummy model. To speed up the parametric studies, parametric model order reduction method is implemented to yield a highly accurate and boundary-condition-independent compact thermal model.