Melting from heat sources flush mounted on a conducting vertical wall

Abstract

A numerical study is conducted for natural convection dominated melting inside discretely heated rectangular enclosures. This study finds applications in the design and operation of thermal energy storage units and the cooling of electric equipment. Results show the benefits of discrete heating over uniform heating for optimizing the melting process. For enclosures of high aspect ratios (A ∼> 4), configurations leading to well controlled heat source temperatures and long melting times are obtained. For cavities of low aspect ratios (A ∼< 4), it is found that the source span η is the most influential parameter. For η ∼ < 0.45, the melting times are shorter and the heat source temperatures remain equal and moderate during the entire melting process. A map for determining the cavity size and the source distribution that optimizes the melting process is presented.

Numerical study of melting in an enclosure with discrete protruding heat sources

“…This explains the deviation to the right of the experimental melting front. Many experiments related to the melting of n-octadecane encountered this phenomenon [12,13]. A part of liquid PCM goes out of computational domain and breaks the adiabatic condition in the north boundary.…”

“…The results obtained show that the cooling of heat sources using PCM melting natural convection leads to a drop of the mean temperatures of heat sources as much as 50% compared to air natural convection cooling. Bruno et al [12] developed a (2D) mathematical model simulating the thermal behaviour of a rectangular enclosure similar to the one studied by Zhang et al [11,13]. Their study finds applications in the design of heat storage units and cooling of electronic equipments.…”

“…The above literature survey shows clearly that the previous studies relating to the PCM electronic cooling were carried out experimentally, except that of Bruno [12]. Although in this latest work a numerical study of melting natural convection in a rectangular enclosure has been conducted, only flush-mounted heat sources were considered.…”

An axisymmetric interfacial tracking model for melting and resolidification in a thin metal film irradiated by ultrashort pulse lasers

“…Fixed grid schemes further includes two main methods: enthalpy method and the equivalent heat capacity method. The enthalpy method [14] can solve heat transfer in mushy zone but has difficulty with temperature oscillation, while the equivalent heat capacity method [15,16] requires large enough temperature range in mushy zone to obtain a converged solution. Cao and Faghri [17] combined the advantages of both enthalpy and equivalent heat capacity methods and proposed a Temperature Transforming Model (TTM).…”

Analysis of a Phase Change Energy Storage System for Pulsed Power Dissipation

“…Pal and Joshi [10] conducted an experimental and computational study of melting in an enclosure of large aspect ratio, under a constant heat flux and discussed the effects of natural convection on the various stages of melting. Binet and Lacroix [11] conducted a numerical study of natural convection-dominated melting inside a rectangular enclosure from three discrete heat sources. A parametric study was performed to examine the effect of the cavity aspect ratio.…”