Abstract:

Phase change materials (PCM) have become one of the hottest topics in the field of thermal energy storage in recent years. However, phase transition processes of most PCM based systems are highly nonlinear, leading to difficulties in solving the problem analytically. Numerical analysis provides a powerful tool to solve such non-linear problems including heat and momentum transfer. This paper gives a state-of-the-art summary of numerical simulation work on the use of Ansys-Fluent, Ansys [These are the same company so need to change.]and PCMexpress software packages in solving phase change materials based energy storage systems in different applications such as buildings. A comparison is made between these different sofatware packages and issues related model establishment, initial conditions and reliability were identified. Moreover, taking account of PCM encapsulation, inorganic PCM supercoiling and phase separation, the development direction of PCM system numerical analysis such as establishing a reasonable model, verifying the simulation results, improving the simulation algorithm, coupling practical conditions and expanding application Fields are also investigated, combining with application and the characteristics of different software packages.

Key words: Ansys-Fluent, PCMexpress, Ansys, numerical simulation, phase change energy storage material, application analysis