Research paper
Lattice Boltzmann simulation of convection melting in complex heat
storage systems filled with phase change materials
Kang Luo, Feng-Ju Yao, Hong-Liang Yi
*
, He-Ping Tan
*
School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, PR China
highlights
Convection melting in multitube heat storage systems are numerical studied by LBM.
Different lattice Boltzmann models for phase change are systematically compared.
The influences of various numbers and arrangements of tubes are investigated.
Effects of Rayleigh and Stefan numbers on volume melt fraction of PCM are examined.
article info
Article history:
Received 6 February 2015
Accepted 20 April 2015
Available online 6 May 2015
Keywords:
Lattice Boltzmann
Melting
Convection
Shell and tube model
abstract
In the present study, a double-population lattice Boltzmann method is applied to the simulation of
convectionediffusion phenomena associated with solideliquid phase transition processes. The research
focus is the advancement of the lattice Boltzmann method to complex multitube heat storage system
with different numbers and arrangements of tubes. Firstly, a systematic comparison of different lattice
Boltzmann models for thermal and flow field in the phase change process is numerically conducted in a
square cavity, and the numerical results are validated by the literature data. Then, a comprehensive
analysis has been performed in order to investigate the influence of various numbers and arrangements
of tubes on the melting dynamics of shell and tube models with different Rayleigh and Stefan numbers.
The computational results show how the transient phase-change process, expressed in terms of the
volume melt fraction of phase change materials (PCM), depends on the thermal and geometrical pa-
rameters of the system.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The fundamental of heat transfer and flow in phase change
materials (PCM) has received considerable attention during the
past two decades due to its potential for thermal energy storage
systems. There exists a wide range of applications for such systems
[1e3], such as energy storage in buildings, electronics cooling,
material processing and thermal management of spacecraft.
Theoretical, numerical and experimental studies in the field have
yielded extensive literature on various aspects of the phase-change
problems, including basic studies of phase-change phenomena [4],
material properties [5], experimental methods and heat transfer
enhancement [6e 8], mathematical modeling and numerical tech-
niques [9e11]. Among them, numerical simulation is a major focus
for its economy and high efficiency, which can significantly
improve the understanding of convection melting processes in heat
storage systems. It is concluded in the critical review of Agyenim
et al. [7] that the most common numerical approach has been the
use of enthalpy formulation.
Some well-developed methods have been applied to simulate
the convection melting models, such as finite difference method
(FDM) [12], finite volume techniques (FVM) [13,14], finite element
method (FEM) [15] and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) [16]. These
numerical simulations are mainly based on two types of grid sys-
tems, namely, fixed grid [17] and adaptive grid [18], in which, the
enthalpy-based LBM is a newly introduced fixed grid based
approach for phase change problems.
* Corresponding authors. Tel.: þ86 451 86412674.
E-mail addresses: yihongliang@hit.edu.cn (H.-L. Yi), tanheping@hit.edu.cn
(H.-P. Tan).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Thermal Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.04.059
1359-4311/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Applied Thermal Engineering 86 (2015) 238e250
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