The design of a high temperature thermoelectric generator element using silicon carbide

This report presents the design of an optimum, high temperature silicon carbide thermoelectric generator element. The analytical efforts have been divided into three basic parts, the development of the theory, the accumulation of the data, and the optimization of the design. The first step in the theory development was the derivation of accurate design equations. With this done, the design philosophy and computer program were constructed, the latter utilizing a subroutine to contain the design equations. The data was obtained from a survey of many references and, for the most part, was found to be inexact, requiring the consideration of ranges of loosely bounded values. In evaluating the data and optimizing the designs, both graphical and numerical methods were used. The actual calculations during the optimization process were performed on the IBH 360/50 system, and entailed some twenty computer runs, encompassing sixty designs. The final result was an element that would produce electrical power at a power density of 9.2 Megawatts/H3 and an efficiency of 9.17 Percent --Abstract, page ii