Influence of Natural Convection and Volume Change on Numerical Simulation of Phase Change Materials for Latent Heat Storage

For the numerical simulation of a heat storage based on phase change materials (PCMs) an enhanced model is presented, considering the physical effects of convection flow in the liquid phase as well as the volume change during phase change. A modified heat capacity is used to realize the phase change. The phase change material is initially defined as a liquid with temperature-dependent material properties. A volume force is added to the Navier-Stokes equations to allow a circulating flow field in the liquid phase and prevent flow motion in the solid phase. The volume change is implemented with the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method. A laboratory phase change experiment was performed using the PCM RT42 with a melting temperature of 42 °C. The laboratory experiment was calculated numerically using the enhanced model to evaluate the numerical model and to investigate the influence of the simulation parameters on the thermal behavior of the PCM. The thermal conductivity is determined as the main influencing parameter. A good agreement of the simulated melting front throughout a major part of the laboratory experiment has been shown. COMSOL Multiphysics provides a default model for phase change, which neglects convection flow and volume change. Compared to the default model, the enhanced model achieves more accurate results but requires more computational cost for complex latent heat storage systems. Using the default model without convection can be reasonable, considering that the heat storage design is either over-dimensioned or a suitable correction factor must be applied.