A correlation of the convective heat transfer coefficient between an air flow and a phase change material plate

摘要

This paper provides a new correlation to determine the heat transfer coefficient between an air flow anda plate made of phase change material (PCM). This correlation was built for the simulation of heat storageunits containing PCM plates subjected to an inlet temperature step. The presented correlation has thefollowing form: NuPCMx;t ¼ NuPSM$f PCM. The first term NuPSM is for a plate made of traditional material. Theterm fPCM is a perturbation due to the phase change in the plate. Each term depends on 5 non-dimensionalparameters. One of them represents the advance in the total heating or cooling process, in order totake into account the transient evolution of the convective coefficient. The correlations are built using theLeast Squares Method, from series of CDF simulation data. The shape of the perturbation fPCM revealsa complex evolution of the temperature repartition in the PCM plate. Finally, a nodal model of the platehas been developed in order to test the provided new correlation and other correlations available in theliterature. The results obtained with the present correlation show better agreements with the CFDresults, which make this correlation suitable for the simulation of PCM heat storage systems.