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Enhanced Natural Convection for Accelerating Melting of Phase Change Material in Cellular Structure through Inserting Fin

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Abstract

The design of thermal conductivity enhancers (TCE) is quite critical to overcoming the disadvantage of the poor thermal conductivity of phase change materials (PCM). The main contribution of this study is firstly to discuss how to actively enhance natural convection of the melted PCM in cellular structure by the fin formed in the structure under the condition of the same metal mass, apart from simultaneously improving heat conduction, which can boost the heat transfer performance. Also, a tailored hybrid fin-lattice structure (HFS) as TCE is designed and fabricated by additive manufacturing (AM). A two-equation numerical method is applied to study the heat transfer of the PCM, and its feasibility is validated with the experimental data. The numerical results indicate that enhanced natural convection and improved heat conduction can be obtained simultaneously when a well-designed fin is embedded into a lattice structure. The enhanced natural convection results in the improved melting rate and the decreased wall temperature; e.g., the complete melting time and the wall temperature are reduced by 11.6% and 19.7%, respectively, because of the fin for metal aluminum. Moreover, the parameters of HFS including the porosity, pore density, and fin dimension have a great impact on the heat transfer. The enhancement effect of the fin for HFS on the melting rate of the PCM increases as the thermal conductivity of the base material decreases. For example, when the fin is introduced into the lattice structure, the complete melting time is reduced by 24.1% for metal titanium. In summary, this study enables us to obtain a good understanding of the mechanism of the heat transfer and provides necessary experimental data for the structural design of HFS fabricated by AM.

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Abbreviations

a sf :

interfacial surface area/m−1

C pf :

specific heat capacity of PCM/kJ·(kg·K)−1

C ps :

specific heat capacity of metal/kJ·(kg·K)−1

d 1 :

the rod diameter of the pyramidal unit cell of lattice structure/mm

E :

thermal energy/J

f 1 :

the content of liquid PCM in semi-melted state

H :

the height of the sample/mm

h :

the height of fin/mm

h sf :

interfacial heat transfer coefficient/W·(m2·K)−1

k e :

effective thermal conductivity/W·(m·K)−1

k se :

effective thermal conductivity of cellular structure/W·(m·K)−1

k fe :

effective thermal conductivity of fluid/W·(m·K)−1

k s :

thermal conductivity of solid/W·(m·K)−1

k f :

thermal conductivity of fluid/W·(m·K)−1

L :

the length of the sample/mm

\(\dot L\) :

latent heat of the phase change material/kJ·kg−1

ΔL :

the length of the epitaxial part of the substrates/mm

l 1 :

the rod length of the pyramidal unit cell of lattice structure/mm

m :

mass/kg

q :

heat flux/W·m−2

S :

the additional term

T :

temperature/K

T m1 :

the lower limit of melting point/K

T m2 :

the upper limit of melting point/K

T 0 :

initial temperature/K

t 1 :

the thickness of fin/mm

u, v, w :

velocity in x, y and z directions/m·s−1

W :

the width of the sample/mm

x, y, z :

cartesian coordinates

β :

thermal expansion coefficient/K−1

ρ :

density of materials/kg·m−3

ε :

porosity of the metal cellular structure

θ :

the angle of the rods of the pyramidal unit cell of lattice structure/(°)

μ f :

dynamic viscosity of phase change material in liquid phase/Pa·s

f :

fluid

s :

solid

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support to this work by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11972105, U1808215 and 11821202), the 111 Project (B14013) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis, Optimization and CAE Software for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Dekui Kong, Yongcun Zhang & Shutian Liu

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  1. Dekui Kong
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Correspondence to Yongcun Zhang.

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Kong, D., Zhang, Y. & Liu, S. Enhanced Natural Convection for Accelerating Melting of Phase Change Material in Cellular Structure through Inserting Fin. J. Therm. Sci. 33, 548–563 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1841-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11630-023-1841-8

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