Modeling phase change material in micro-foam under constant temperature condition

Heat transfer of phase change material (PCM) in an open cell micro-foam structure was numerically studied. A high constant temperature was specified at the top surface of the structure. Each unit of the micro-foam is a body-centered-cubic (BCC) lattice embedded with spherical micro-pores. Two different simulation methodologies were applied. One is the high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS), which allows for the effective thermo-physical parameters to be derived. The other methodology is a volume-averaged simulation based on one- and two-temperature models. Our results show that the volume-averaged simulation can accurately and efficiently capture the phase change process in PCM/micro-foam systems, with the effective thermal conductivity derived from direct simulations and expressed as a power law of porosity.