A Feasibility Investigation on Improving Structural Integrity of Thermoelectric Modules With Varying Geometry

This study investigates the feasibility of improving the structural integrity of thermoelectric modules (TEMs) with varying geometry. For this purpose, six different TEM models with various thermoelectric leg geometries were designed and modeled in order to perform a thermal stress FEA using ANSYS Workbench. Temperature dependent material properties were used since some properties such as coefficients of thermal expansion change with temperature. Significant decrease in thermal stresses and leg deformations were observed with some models. Particularly, the cylindrical TE leg geometry model has approximately 54% lower Von Mises stresses (294MPa) and 13% lower TE leg deformations (3.9μm) than those of the typical TE leg geometry model (635MPa and 4.5μm). Power generation analyses of the models were performed to evaluate the effect of new TE leg geometries on the performance. TEM model with cylindrical TE leg geometry has the highest power generation (29.3mW) among all the models.