Numerical Investigation on Heat Transfer

Enhancement with Inclination Angle of

PCM Set

Yihang Lu and Jingde Zhao

School of Environmental Science & Engineering, Donghua University
Shanghai, China
E-mail: zhaojingde@dhu.dhu.cn
www.dhu.edu.cn
Inclination angle of phase change material (PCM) is an important impactor on heat transfer of
melting and solidification. During melting, the effect of solid core sedimentation will enhance the
heat transfer, because it makes solid core closer to heating surface so that the heat resistance of
liquid layer can be reduced. A series of high aspect ratio 2-dimension numerical models are
established and the heat transfer is simulated in this study. Octadecane is chosen as the PCM and the
inclination angle is varied from 0 to 90 at increments of 15. The process of melting is
characterized by liquid fraction and the transient performance of the model was visualized by
contours. The results reveal that inclination angle has a remarkable influence on solid core
sedimentation and the heat transfer rate. The melting time is fallen off to 30% at 75when compared
to that of the vertical case. It is concluded that the minimum melting time is when the angle is
between 60and 75.

Keywords: phase change material; numerical simulation; inclination angle; solid core sedimentation

1. Introduction
In the past three decades years phase change materials (PCMs) has been widely used [1].
The phase change material in the earlier application is the solar energy storage. In the
United States, Telkes [2] first built a passive solar house of the phase change material, it
can collect energy during the day and release energy at night or on cloudy days. The
PCMs can be used to bridge the gap between energy generation and consumption.
Halford [3] addresses potential peak air conditioning load shifting strategies using
encapsulated phase change materials. Moreover, the phase change material has an
excellent property, during the melting process the temperature is nearly constant, which
can be used to provide people with a more thermal comfort environment, and the PCMs
have been used in building [4-5], air conditioning system [6], and textile [7-8]. The
PCMs also employed in the waste heat recovery [9-10] to obtain a better energy efficient.
However, the PCMs itself exist many disadvantages, such as super-cooling [11], and
another major disadvantage of all PCMs is low thermal conductivity. In response to the
shortcomings of low thermal conductivity, a lot of improvements, such as embedding a
metal model [12], adding high conductivity particles [13-14], and increasing the surface
area [15-16] ,to be used to solve the problem.

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 The above approaches enhance the heat transfer by using some tools. Some
researches focus on the melting process of PCMs in other ways, the aspect ratio [17],
geometry [18-19], and the inclination angle. Such as Webb and Viskanta[20] studied the
melting heat transfer of n-octadecance in an inclined rectangular enclosure. It was found
that decreasing the inclination angle increases the three-dimensionality of the flow field
and results in non-uniform melting of the solid PCM. The influence of natural convection
currents on the melting rate and melting front profile were studied by Ho and Viskanta
[21]. Babak Kamkari [1] showed that for the range of temperatures considered, the total
melting time for the 45and 0inclined enclosures were, on average, 35% and 53% less
than the vertical enclosure, respectively. However, if there are other factors also affect the
phase change heat transfer with the inclination angle changes. Jiang Lu [22] shows
influencing factors to a phase change material-based heat sink performance include
inclination angle, which implies an optimal angle between 60and 75, and various heat
load. Tan [23] observed that during unconstrained melting, the solid PCM sinks and
melting at the bottom half accelerates due to the heat conduction at the lower part of the
solid PCM.
A 2-D rectangle melting model with inclination angle change is showed in Figure 3
In the numerical simulation, it is found during PCMs melting the inclination angle is not
only change the flow field, but also the solid core sedimentation can be work. It leads to
the heating surface and a part of the solid phase change material contact directly which
means the thermal resistance of liquid PCM can be reduced, so the melting acceleration.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) enables a more detailed study of the phase change
profile [24]. A commerce numerical simulation program Fluent was taken to simulate the
effect of the inclination angle to PCM melting.

2. Numerical Model

Figure. 1. 3-dimension model. Figure .2. 2-dimension Figure. 3. The melting model.
model.

A 3-dimension model diagram is showed in the Figure 1., but the direction of gravity is
we mainly focus on, and because its length is much longer than its width, so Figure 1.is
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simplified to a two-dimensional model which is showed in Figure 2. and itself CFD
model is showed in Figure 3.
At first the grid of the model was created in Gambit2.4.6, and then imported into
Fluent6.3.26. In Figure 3, the variable of the model is inclination angle, and counter-
clockwise direction is considered positive, - were chose 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90.
The mesh used for the zone is shown in Figure 3. Boundary mesh was employed for
all walls. The melting process in the zone was simulated using Fluent by making use of
the porosity-enthalpy method.
The enthalpy (the total heat content) of PCM can be expressed as
H h H (1)
where the sum of sensible heat is h = cT, and the latent heat is H.
The equation of conservation of mass is
u v w
0 (2)
x y z
where u, v and w are the superficial velocities in the x, y and z directions,
respectively.
The conservation equations of momentum are
( u) u P
( uu) ( ) Sx (3)
t x x
( v) v P
( uv) ( ) Sy (4)
t y y
( w) w P
( uw) ( ) S z S b (5)
t z z
where P is pressure, is density, is the liquid viscosity, and Sx, Sy, Sz, and Sb are
source terms.
The energy conservation equation is
h h
( uh) (a ) S h 0 (6)
t t
where a is the thermal diffusivity and Sh is a phase related source term.
A mushy phase change state to account for the latent heat contribution of the PCM
was all showed in [25]. The properties of octadecane are listed in Table 1.
Tab. 1. Thermo-physical properties of octadecane

Property solid/liquid Value Unit

Density 814/775 kg/m3
Specific 1.8/2.2 kJ/(kgK)
Viscosity 0.0035 kg/(ms)
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 Property solid/liquid Value Unit
Thermal conductivity 0.42/0.15 w/(mK)
Thermal expansion coefficient 0.000869 1/K
Latent heat 245 kJ/kg
Liquidus temperature 301.3 K
Solidus temperature 300.7 K

3. Results and discussion

200s 400s

600s 800s

1000s 1092s

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 1400s 1600s 1700s
Figure. 4. 75and 0melting process

In the Figure 4, the shape of the solid octadecane is symmetrical in the 0 degree melting
process and in the 75 degree case the head shape of the solid octadecane is falling wedge.
Because the density of the solid octadecane is larger than the liquid octadecane, with the
solid core sedimentation the contact surface between the available heating surface and the
solid octadecane will be different between the inclination angles. The thermal resistance
of the liquid octadecane can be reduced in the case of direct contact on the right wall.

Figure. 5. Liquid fraction

In Figure 5, the melting curve of 0is the most gentle, and the melting time is the
longest. The melting curve of 75is the steepest, and the completely melting time is the

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shortest. The melting curve of 30, 45, and 60 tends to be consistent, the melting time
of these angles from 15and 75are shorter than 0and in the case of 75its melting
time is shorter than the time of 0about 30%.

4. Conclusions
The numerical simulation has been taken in this paper to understand the relationship
between the inclination angles and completely melting time. The results suggest that the
different inclination angle result in a different melting process, and there is an optimum
angle between 60and 75.

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