CH5415 - MIDSEM ANSWERS

Q1. Discuss entropy generation minimization (EGM) and design in- nature constructal
law.

A) Each flow system operates steadily while exchanging heat, work, and mass with the
environment. Steady state means that every global property of the system (every property
“inventory”) is constant in time. The entropy of the system is one such inventory, and it is
constant. For this system definition then, the second law states that the system generates
entropy at a constant rate. It does not state that the flow system generates entropy at a
minimum or maximum rate or that the system must have this configuration and not the other.

The steady state operation of the system means the following :

This difference is positive, and it means that the generation of power is always accompanied
by losses of potentially available power. Equation (19) is known as the Gouy-Stodola
theorem. The difference ˙Wrev − ˙W is the rate at which useful energy (exergy) is lost
because of the irreversibility of system operation. The extent (severity) of irreversible
operation is measured in terms of the magnitude of ˙Sgen . The entire history of power
generation technology has been aligned with reducing the gap between actual operation (˙W
) and operation in the reversible limit ( ˙Wrev).

Indeed, the Gouy-Stodola Eq. (19) continues to hold if instead of the closed system
executing cycles we consider an unspecified open system executing any process
per unit time. In this formulation, we note that the sum of heat transfer rate inputs to the
system∑j ˙Q j is equal to ˙Q0 + ∑i ˙Q i , where ˙Q0 is the heat interaction with the ambient
(T0).
The message of the reversible limit [Eq. (22)] is that in the largest power output is the
difference between the net exergy that flows into the system and the exergy stored inside
the system. This sort of accounting (for power, in the reversible limit) is analogous to the
accounting for mass conservation. The difference between power and mass accounting is
that the actual power output, Eq. (20), is always smaller than the power output in the
reversible limit, Eq. (22), the difference between the two being T0 ˙Sgen .In sum, ˙Wrev
represents the flow of exergy as work per unit time out of the system, and the actual flow (
˙W ) is smaller because of the exergy destroyed via irreversibility inside the system. This is
why T0 ˙Sgen represents the rate of exergy destruction inside the system (or the lost power),
and why to avoid this effect is completely equivalent to the minimization of entropy
generation (EGM).

The subtle aspect is that the difference ( ˙Wrev − ˙W ), or ˙Sgen , is not only positive but it is
also constant because of the steady-state operation.

Design in Nature: The Constructal Law

The interest in design in nature is expanding because of two contemporary trends:

(a) A growing volume of observations is showing that features of “design” (configuration,

pattern, rhythm, scaling rules) are present throughout nature, animate and inanimate, and
(b) Design phenomena are not covered by the old laws of physics

Thermodynamics rests on two laws that are both “first principles”. The first law commands
the conservation of energy in any system. The second law commands the presence of
irreversibility (i.e. the generation of entropy) in any system. The permanence and extreme
generality of the two laws are consequences of the fact that in thermodynamics the “any
system” is a black box. It is a region of space, or a collection of matter without specified
shape and structure. The two laws are global statements about the balance or imbalance of
the flows (mass, heat, work) that flow into and out of the black box.
The constructal law is a definition of “life” in the broadest possible sense: to be alive, a
system must be able to flow and to morph in time so that its currents flow more and more
easily. Live are the water streams in the river basins and the streams of animal mass flowing
on the landscape, which are better known as animal locomotion and migration. Live are
the animate and the inanimate systems that flow, move, and change configuration. The
constructal law commands that the changes in configuration must occur in a particular
direction in time (toward designs that allow currents to flow more easily).

The constructal law places the concepts of “design” and “evolution” centrally in physics.
Equally important is what the constructal law does not command. The constructal law is not
a statement of optimization, maximization, minimization, or any other mental image of “end
design” or “destiny”. The constructal law is about the direction of evolution in time, and the
fact that design in nature is not static: it is dynamic, ever changing, like the images in a
movie at the cinema. Evolution never ends. This is what design and evolution are in nature,
and the constructal law captures them completely.

The flowing nature is composed of systems that move as engines connected to brakes. In
time, the “engines” of nature acquire configurations that flow more easily, and this means
that they evolve toward less entropy generation, and more production.

Fig shows the engine + brake design of nature. The constructal law governs how the system
emerges and persists: by generating a flow architecture that distributes imperfections
through the flow space and endows it with configuration. The ‘engine’ part evolves in time
towards generating more power (or less dissipation), and as a consequence, the ‘brake’ part
evolves toward more dissipation.

The physics phenomenon of design generation and evolution facilitates the circuit executed
by water in nature: tree-shaped river basins and deltas, vegetation, and all the features of
animal design and human and machine species.
The constructal law is not an optimality statement about freeze-frame design. It is in contrast
with the current science literature, which contains many diverse and contradictory
statements of optimality (max, min) that have, at best, limited applicability. This quality of the
constructal law is especially important because the constructal law inspires the mind to
fast-forward the design evolution process. This is in fact what the human mind does with any
law of physics—the mind uses the law to predict features of future phenomena.

2. Discuss constructal concept and principles with diagrams: (i) River basin design (ii)
Engine and brake design and (iii) two flow mechanisms. [4+4+4]

Constructal theory is the view that (i) the generation of images of design (pattern, rhythm) in
nature is a phenomenon of physics and (ii) this phenomenon is covered by a principle (the
constructal law): ‘for a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such
that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it’. This law is
about the necessity of design to occur, and about the time direction of the phenomenon: the
tape of the design evolution ‘movie’ runs such that existing configurations are replaced by
globally easier flowing configurations. The constructal law has two useful sides: the
prediction of natural phenomena and the strategic engineering of novel architectures, based
on the constructal law, i.e. not by mimicking nature. We show that the emergence of scaling
laws in inanimate (geophysical) flow systems is the same phenomenon as the emergence of
allometric laws in animate (biological) flow systems. Examples are lung design, animal
locomotion, vegetation, river basins, turbulent flow structure, self-lubrication and natural
multi-scale porous media. This article outlines the place of the constructal law as a
self-standing law in physics, which covers all the ad hoc (and contradictory) statements of
optimality such as minimum entropy generation, maximum entropy generation, minimum
flow resistance, maximum flow resistance, minimum time, minimum weight, uniform
maximum stresses and characteristic organ sizes. Nature is configured to flow and move as
a conglomerate of ‘engine and brake’ designs.

THE CONSTRUCTAL LAW:

Constructal theory is the view that the generation of flow configuration is a universal
phenomenon of all physics which is covered by a law of physics (the constructal law). The
constructal law is the statement proclaiming the existence and the time direction of the
evolution of configuration. It is far more general than ‘maximum entropy production’. It is not
a statement of optimality (min, max), end design or destiny. No flow system is destined to
end up in a certain configuration at long times.

Although lungs and animals are animate systems (bio), and river basins are considered to
be inanimate (geo, not bio), they both display the same flow architecture—the dendrite.
Man-made flow systems (technologies) evolve in the same way, and are predictable based
on the same principle. All these classes of natural designs, the animate, inanimate and
engineered (the extensions of the humans), are described by amazingly compact formulae
(scaling laws), which make them easy to anticipate in spite of their great diversity.

In science, the origin (the genesis) of the configuration of flow systems has been overlooked.
Design has been taken for granted—at best, it has been attributed to chance, inspiration,
talent and art. In thermodynamics, our education is based on sketches of streams that flow
into and out of black boxes, sketches that bear no relation to reality, to the position that each
stream occupies in space and in time. The constructal law runs counter to this attitude.
Geometry or drawing is not a figure that always existed and now is available to look at, or
worse to look through. The natural drawing always changes. It evolves, because it (the
drawing) is the persistent movement, struggle, contortion and mechanism by which the flow
system achieves global flow access more and more easily. When the flow stops, the natural
drawing becomes a flow ‘fossil’ (e.g. dry river bed, snowflake, animal skeleton, abandoned
technology and the pyramids of Egypt).

In particular, the pyramids are fossils of the area-to-point flow of stones that led to the
edifice. If this flow is configured such that the edifice is constructed in the easiest way, i.e.
with less and less expenditure of useful energy, then the shape of the pyramid (the angle at
the base) is unique, size independent and dictated by the technology of the era. The
prediction is that the pyramid construction must proceed layer by layer such that the pyramid
is geometrically similar to itself during its growth (like an onion).

The constructal law has been used to account for many features of ‘design’ in nature, from
the tree-shaped flows of lungs and river basins, to the scaling laws of animal design, river
basin design and social dynamics. This body of work has two parts: (i) the use of the
constructal law to predict and explain the occurrence of natural flow configurations,
inanimate and animate, and (ii) the application of the constructal law as a physics principle in
engineering, as a philosophy of design as science. The present article focuses on part (i).
The progress on part (ii) is reviewed in a new book.

Constructal theory is attracting many researchers and educators from many fields and in a
new direction: to use the constructal law for better science and for better organization of the
movement and connecting of people, goods and information. This direction is constructal
design, and with it we seek not only better flowing configurations but also better (faster,
cheaper, direct, reliable) strategies for generating the geometry that is missing from the
black-box sketches.

River basin design:

River basins evolve in time, and generate their area-to-point dendritic architectures in
accordance with the constructal law. Shows three ‘movies’ of the phenomenon. The first is
the evolution of a river basin on the floor of the laboratory, under a steady and uniform
artificial rain. The second is a numerical simulation based on the same scenario (steady
uniform rain) and a Darcy-flow model of soil erosion in which grains are removed if the local
seepage velocity is high enough. The removed grains create subregions (the channels) with
markedly higher permeability.
The emergence and evolution of river basins of all sizes illustrate the natural phenomenon
summarized by the constructal law. In time, existing patterns (black channels on white areas
with seepage) are replaced by patterns that flow more easily. (a) Artificial river basin
evolution generated under steady uniform rain on a 15 × 9 m area in a laboratory at
Colorado State University . The time runs from left to right. (b) Numerical simulation of
seepage in a porous medium with spatially uniform erosion properties . The dislodged grains
create channels with greater permeability, shown in black. (c) Seemingly random dendritic
channels generated by seepage in a porous medium with spatially random erosion
properties . Here, the geological properties of the flow domain are random, unknown and
unpredictable. The randomness and diversity of natural river basins is due to this. The
principle (the tendency) that generates the evolving flow configurations is deterministic, and
not random. (b,c) The number of dislodged grains (n) is (i) 200, (ii) 400, (iii) 600 and (iv) 800.
Because in the second movie the erosion property of the seepage medium (the velocity
threshold needed to remove one grain) is uniform, the dendritic flow structure that emerges
is symmetric. The third movie was generated with the same soil erosion mechanism, except
that the erosion threshold had values distributed randomly over the square basin. The
resulting dendritic pattern is asymmetric; however, its random appearance is due to the
unknown (random) geological properties of the domain, and not to a random tendency of
generating configuration.

The principle that generates all these configurations is deterministic. The second and third
movies are reproduced in every frame when the erosion simulation process is repeated on
the same basis, with the same geological erosion characteristics.

River basins of all sizes are united by firmly established empirical rules. When the flow is
turbulent in the fully rough regime, the flow architecture should be based on multi-scale
constructs in which each mother channel is supplied by four daughter channels. Quadrupling
is the constructal path to survival (to persisting in time), not dichotomy, not assemblies of
eight flowing elements, etc.

Engine and brake design:

The legacy of living flow systems on Earth is the same as that of inanimate flow systems.
They move mass, from here to there, by destroying exergy that originates from the Sun.
Animals do this clearly, based on rule (viii): the exergy used equals the moved weight (Mg)
times the horizontal displacement (L). The same holds for our vehicles, on land, in air and in
water. The spent fuel is proportional to the weight of the vehicle times the distance travelled.
Animal design has been morphed and perfected over millions of years. Vehicle design is
evolving right now, on design tables and in factories. With reference to the engine model at
the start of §2, the vehicle motor burns fuel in proportion to the high-temperature heating rate
QH. This stream of heat is converted partially into mechanical power delivered to the wheels
(W), while the remainder (QL or QH − W) is dissipated into the environment. Not mentioned
in thermodynamics (until now) is the fact that W is itself dissipated into the ambient, because
of the movement of vehicle weight (Mg) over the horizontal distance L.

To summarize, all the high-temperature heating that comes from burning fuel (QH or the
exergy associated with QH and the high temperature of combustion) is dissipated into the
environment. The need for higher efficiencies in power generation (greater W/QH) is the
same as the need to have more W, i.e. the need to move more weight over larger distances
on the surface of the Earth, which is the natural phenomenon (tendency) summarized in the
constructal law.

At the end of the day, when all the fuel has been burned, and all the food has been eaten,
this is what animate flow systems have achieved. They have moved mass on the surface of
the Earth (they have ‘mixed’ the Earth's crust) more than in the absence of animate flow
systems.

The moving animal or vehicle is equivalent to an engine connected to a brake. The power
generated by muscles and motors is ultimately and necessarily dissipated by rubbing against
the environment. There is no taker for the W produced by the animal and vehicle. This is
why the GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned in that
country.

Earth, with its solar heat input, heat rejection and wheels of atmospheric and oceanic
circulation, is a heat engine without shaft. Its maximized (but not ideal) mechanical power
output cannot be delivered to an extraterrestrial system. Instead, the earth engine must
dissipate through air, water and solid (rocks) friction and other irreversibilities (e.g. heat
leaks) all the mechanical power that it produces. It does so by ‘spinning in its brake’ as fast
as is necessary (and from this follow the winds and the ocean currents, which proceed along
easiest routes, and flow at finite, characteristic speeds). Because the flowing Earth is a
constructal heat engine, its flow configuration has evolved towards paths that generate less
irreversibility. The earth engine would produce more and more power under its finite-size
constraints, but then this means that it would dissipate more and more of it at the interfaces
between engine and environment. Following a principle of maximum dissipation is being
invoked in geophysics: this agrees with what goes on in the brake, and is covered by the
constructal law.

In engineering and biology (power plants, animals), the engines have shafts, rods, legs and
wings that deliver the mechanical power to external entities that use the power (e.g. vehicles
and animal bodies needing propulsion). Because the engines of engineering and biology are
constructal, they morph in time towards easier flowing configurations. They evolve towards
producing more mechanical power (under finiteness constraints), which, for them, means a
time evolution towards less dissipation, or greater efficiency.
In sum, the constructal law shows that there is no conflict between minimum entropy
generation (biology, engineering) and maximum entropy generation (geophysics), why each
statement seems to work in its limited ad hoc domain, and why the constructal law is
general.

Outside the engineering or biology engine, we see that all the mechanical power is
destroyed through friction and other irreversibility mechanisms (e.g. transportation and
manufacturing for man, animal locomotion and body heat loss to ambient). The engine and
its immediate environment (the ‘brake’), as one thermodynamic system, are analogous to the
entire Earth. The flowing Earth (with all its engine + brake components, rivers, fish, turbulent
eddies, etc.) accomplishes as much as any other flow architecture, animate or inanimate: it
mixes the Earth's crust most effectively—more effectively than in the absence of constructal
phenomena of generation of flow configuration.

The movement of animals—the flow of animal mass on Earth—is analogous to other moving
and mixing designs such as the turbulent eddies in rivers, oceans and the atmosphere. It is
not an exaggeration to regard animals as self-driven packs of water, i.e. motorized vehicles
of water mass, which spread and mix the Earth like the eddies in the ocean and the
atmosphere.

Irrefutable evidence in support of this analogy is how all these packs of biological matter
have morphed and spread over larger areas, depths and altitudes, in this remarkable
sequence in time: fish in water, walking fish and other animals on land, flying animals in the
atmosphere, human and machine species in the air, and human and machine species in
outer space and not in the opposite time direction. The balanced and intertwined flows that
generate our engineering, economics and social organization are no different from the
natural flow architectures of biology (animal design) and geophysics (river basins, global
circulation).

One of the reviewers of the original version of the manuscript commented that the
assumption of maximum dissipation is tacitly adopted in the sketch of the engine + brake
design of nature concept put forth. This is false. The engine shown in can be ‘any’ engine,
optimized or not, ideal (Carnot) or not ideal is most general, i.e. as general as
thermodynamics itself. If one pursues less dissipation in the bio, geo and engineered flow
architectures, then that direction of design generation is equivalent to pursuing more
dissipation in the ‘brake’ that connects the constructal architecture to its environment. In the
limit, minimum dissipation in the former leads the human mind on to the same
design-generation path as maximum dissipation in the latter. The drawing is about the
equivalence of the seemingly antagonistic ad hoc statements (i) and (ii) (§2), and not about
optimality. To repeat, the constructal law statement is about the direction of configuration
evolution in time, not about min, max, opt and end design.

The reviewer's comment is also wrong because of the history. It is a thermodynamics

drawing, first reported to show that the system traversed by the flow of heat from a high
temperature to a low temperature is equivalent to a heat engine that dissipates its work
output entirely in a brake. The heat engine is any engine. This drawing has been appearing
in thermodynamics, where it serves a key pedagogical role: the thermodynamic irreversibility
of the heat transfer from hot to cold is made visible (palpable) when presented as dissipation
of work in the brake. In the lower part , we show that this 1976 drawing unifies the
statements (i) and (ii) (§2) under the constructal law, and this means that all of nature is
configured to flow and move as a conglomerate of engine and brake designs.

Two flow mechanisms:

A constructal design feature that unites many of the natural flow configurations is that there
is more than one mechanism at the disposal of the currents that must flow. The tree-shaped
flows of nature are an icon of this duality: organized flow (streams along channels) coexists
with disorganized flow (diffusion) across the spaces between channels. There is a balance
between the two flow mechanisms, and between large channels and small channels (e.g.
§3).

In all the river basins on Earth, the time scale of seepage down the hill slope is the same as
the residence time in the entire basin. This balance between dissimilar flow mechanisms
makes the river basin flow in the same way as the lung, where there is a balance between
flow resistance (or the residence time) along the airways and across the alveolus. The river
basin and lung designs facilitate the flow access between one point and an infinity of points
(area, volume).

The turbulent eddy is born out of the same diffusion–convection balance. Consider the flow
of momentum by shear from a semi-infinite fluid of uniform speed V to the rest of the fluid,
which is stationary. The shear plane becomes enveloped in a layer of thickness D that
increases in time. If momentum transport across D is by viscous diffusion (laminar flow), then
D grows as (νt)1/2, where ν is the kinematic viscosity. If momentum is transported by
streams (rolls), then D acquires the scale Vt. Greater flow access means that laminar shear
is preferred at short times, and eddies at longer times. The transition between the two is
marked by the generation of configuration: the first eddy. The intersection of the D(t) curves
for the laminar and eddy shear leads to the prediction that transition occurs when the local
Reynolds number VD/ν is of order 102, where V and D are the peripheral speed and size of
the first eddy. This agrees with all observations of transition in jets, wakes, plumes, shear
layers and boundary layers in forced and natural convection. This is the first time that the
seed of turbulence (the first eddy, i.e. turbulence itself) is predicted from principle, i.e. not
assumed (postulated) as ‘disturbances’ and ‘fluctuations’.

Dendritic solidification (e.g. snowflakes) has the same origin. In a motionless fluid medium at
a temperature slightly below the solidification temperature, latent heat is released at the
solidification site and flows into the subcooled medium. How is this flow of heat facilitated in
nature? It is by relying on thermal diffusion at short times and growing needles at longer
times. Thermal diffusion spreads as a spherical wave of radius (αt)1/2, where α is the
thermal diffusivity of the medium. Needles grow at constant speed parallel to themselves.
This remarkable positioning of diffusive interstices relative to penetrating needles is the
‘design’, the white on which the black lines are drawn.
The same scenario rules the formation of needles and dendritic aggregates of dust particles
in air and filter surfaces. Stony corals, bacterial colonies and plant roots favour a small-size
ball shape in the beginning of their growth. Later, corals opt for larger structures with
branches that invade the water flow. Nature selects diffusion at short times and ion
convection at longer times. The collaboration of the two mechanisms towards greater access
is shown in general terms.

Turbulence, dendritic solidification, electrodiffusion, mud cracks, dust aggregates, stony

corals and bacterial colonies owe their configurations to the natural tendency to flow more
easily. To achieve this, they combine two flow mechanisms in a particular way. The distance
travelled by diffusion increases in time as t1/2, and the speed of the diffusion front decreases
as t−1/2. Greater flow access calls for a mechanism that is more effective at long times:
convection (streams). Together, the two mechanisms provide greater flow access than one
mechanism alone, provided that they are arranged in this order: diffusion at short time and
length scales, woven with convection at larger scales. Nature always chooses this
arrangement, and not the opposite.
Q3. Discuss on mathematical equations with diagrams for optimization of rectangular
elemental area and first order assembly construct.
Q4. Discuss on mathematical equations with diagrams for optimization of triangular
elemental arca with first and second order assembly constructs.

As a result of the rapid development of the micro-electronic technology, the miniaturization

and high integration of the electronic devices are the trends, and the corresponding thermal
current densities of the electronic devices tend to be higher and higher.One way to cool the
electronic devices is by using a high-conductivity material. For this problem, Bejan put
forward the ‘tree-shaped network’ constructal method based on the constructal theory
[1–28], which derived the optimal highly effective conduction channel distribution with the
premise that the heat generation is uniform and the ratio of the conductivity of
high-conductive material to that of electronic material is high. The thermal resistance of the
electronic device was reduced by using this method.

The ‘tree-shaped network’ constructal method started the optimization with an elemental
area which is very small. Then, assembling the first-order assembly construct with the
optimal area and optimizing this construct with respect to the number of elemental area and
the distribution of high-conductivity material. In this way, a higher-order assembly construct
can also be assembled. Having compared the thermal resistance of each order construct,
Ghodoossi [29] found that the thermal resistance does not decrease with the increase in the
construct complex. The shape of the elemental area affects the constructal optimization
results. Ghodoossi and Egrican [31] studied the ‘tree-shaped network’ constructal
optimization with a triangular elemental area with the premise that the new-order assembly
construct must be assembled by the optimized last-order construct.

2 TRIANGULAR ELEMENTAL AREA

The thickness of the triangular elemental area is assumed to be unit length. The heat
generation rate per unit area is constant

⁠ he triangular elemental area size A0 is constant, but the aspect ratio H0/L0 is free to vary.
T
The heat generated in the triangular elemental area is first directed to a relatively highly
conductive link of width D0, which is located on the longer axes of the triangular elemental
area. Then it is conducted to a heat sink located at point M0 by the D0 link. The boundary of
the triangular elemental area is adiabatic, except for the heat sink point M0. It is assumed
that the thermal conductivity of a highly conductive link (kp) is much higher than that of
electronic material (k0) and the area occupied by highly conductive material is much smaller
than the area of electronic material. It is also assumed that the triangular elemental area is
slender enough to assume one-dimensional (y-direction) heat conduction through the
triangular elemental heat-generating area.
FIRST-ORDER ASSEMBLY CONSTRUCT

A large number of triangular elemental areas are assembled in the way shownThe triangular
elemental areas are lined up to both sides of the new high-conductivity path of width D1. The
heat currents of each triangular elemental area are first conducted to the new path. With the
new path, the heat currents are then directed to the heat sink point M1. The outer boundary
of this area is adiabatic except for the heat sink point M1. The area size A1 is constant, but
the area size of A0 and the aspect ratio H1/L1 are free to vary. It can also be considered that
the area size of A0 is constant, while the area size of A1 and the aspect ratio H1/L1 are free
to vary. These two methods are called inward design method and forward design method,
which optimize the first construct by taking the thermal resistance as the objective and derive
consistent conclusions. Here, the inward design method is adopted.
The above results show that the non-dimensional thermal resistance decreases as the
elemental area's geometric aspect ratio (a) decreases. Obviously, it is not optimal to put the
optimized elements, which have the optimum geometric aspect ratio [Equation (3)], as used
in the original ‘tree-shaped network’ constructal method [31]. The minimum heat resistance
of the first-assembly construct obtained herein, without the premise that the new-order
assembly construct must be assembled by the optimized last-order construct, is decreased
∼9% comparing with that obtained with the premise.

SECOND-ORDER ASSEMBLY CONSTRUCT

The new second-order assembly construct with triangular elemental areas is shown in
Figure 3 [31]. It is assembled just as the first-order assembly constructs. The first-order
assembly constructs are lined up on both sides of the new high-conductivity path of width
D2. The heat currents of the first-order assembly constructs are first conducted via the new
path. With the new path, the heat currents are then directed to the heat sink point M2. The
boundary of the construct is adiabatic, except for the heat sink point located at M2. The
areas of A2 and A0 are fixed, but the aspect ratio of the new construct (H2/L2) is free to
vary. Contrary to the original ‘tree-shaped network’ constructal method, the number (n1) of
elemental areas in the first-order assembly construct, the number (n2) of the first-order
assembly construct, the porosity (φ1) of the first-order assembly construct and the porosity
(φ0) and aspect ratio (a) of the elemental area are all new degrees of freedom.
The new-order assembly is assembled by the optimized last-order assemblies in the
traditional constructal design method. Based on the constructal theory, this article
re-optimizes the triangular assembly without the premise that the new-order assembly
should be assembled by the optimized last-order assemblies. The results show that the
minimum thermal resistance of the triangular first-order assembly, without the premise that
the new-order assembly construct must be assembled by the optimized last-order construct,
is decreased by 9% compared with that obtained with the premise. The higher order
assembly will be converted to the first-order assembly when it approaches its optimum;
therefore, the first-order assembly is the optimal structure among the triangular assemblies.