Validation of heat transfer models for PCMs with a conductivimeter

In order to evaluate the accuracy and performance of two different heat transfer models for PCM containing systems, a thermal testing has been performed in a conductivimeter. A mixture of PCM and gypsum was submitted to a cyclic surface temperature change inside the conductivimeter, measuring heat fluxes and temperatures. The results of this test were used to validate two different heat transfer models, based on finite differences and on neural networks. Both heat transfer models were compared with the test results, showing good agreement with experimental data in both cases (mean error less than 5%) and a better performance (accuracy and calculation time) for the neural network.