Numerical Study of Natural-Convection-Dominated Melting Inside Uniformly and Discretely Heated Rectangular Cavities

Thermal regulation of building-integrated photovoltaics using phase change materials

“…For the conduction-dominated phase, in some models the effects of natural convection in the melt phase is incorporated in the model by using an enhanced thermal conductivity (or thermal diffusivity) for the melt [19][20][21][22][23]. Studies have been undertaken that focus on the melt process inside containers using two-dimensional numerical models for rectangular cross section containers [24][25][26][27] and for cylindrical containers [28][29][30]. In spite of the impressive number of articles published on the subject over the last 15 years, simulation of PCMs for real thermal applications with cyclic melting and solidification subject to realistic boundary conditions remains a challenging task [17].…”

How mushy zone evolves and affects the thermal behaviours in latent heat storage and recovery: A numerical study

“…Lastly, the difference between the isothermal and non‐isothermal phase transitions is directly ignored so that those PCMs are assumed as isothermal for simplicity in some researches. For instance, in the above reviewed list, Vogel et al and Tiari et al assumed the binary inorganic salt, that is, KNO 3 ‐NaNO 3 as isothermal; Chen et al and Binet et al took the same assumption for lauric acid and n‐octadecane, respectively. In those cases, the mushy zone was simplified as a distinct and sharp phase interface between the liquid and solid regions instead of a finite spatial zone, where the heat transfer, especially the latent heat evolution obviously differs.…”