Modeling Phase Change Material in Micro-Foam Under Constant Temperature Condition (Postprint)

Abstract

Heat transfer of phase change material (PCM) in an open cell micro-foam structure was numerically studied. A high constant temperature was specified at the top surface of the structure. Each unit of the micro-foam is a body-centered-cubic (BCC) lattice embedded with spherical micro-pores. Two different simulation methodologies were applied. One is the high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS), which allows for the effective thermo-physical parameters to be derived. The other methodology is a volume-averaged simulation based on one- and two-temperature models. Our results show that the volume-averaged simulation can accurately and efficiently capture the phase change process in PCM/micro-foam systems, with the effective thermal conductivity derived from direct simulations and expressed as a power law of porosity.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA597348

Entities

People

  • Soumya S. Patnaik
  • Xin Hu

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Climate Change
  • Conductivity
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Heat Energy
  • Heat Of Fusion
  • Heat Transfer
  • Heat Transfer Coefficients
  • Latent Heat
  • Mass Transfer
  • Materials
  • Phase Change Materials
  • Simulations
  • Temperature Gradients
  • Thermal Conductivity

Readers

  • Canadian European Scientific Immigration and Epilepsy Clearance Studies
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics
  • Thermal Physics or Thermal Science.