Computational analysis of effective thermal conductivity of microencapsulated phase change material coated composite fabrics

Microencapsulated phase change materials have been widely used as filler material to develop thermoregulating textile composites. Phase change material has unique property of latent heat that can absorb and release energy over constant temperature range. In this work a method is developed to predict the effective thermal conductivity of microencapsulated phase change material coated composite woven fabrics via finite element analysis. For this purpose unit cell of microencapsulated phase change materials as coated material and woven fabrics were developed and analysed by applying different boundary conditions. Validation of the models was carried out on the basis of strong correlation in effective thermal conductivity values of the microencapsulated phase change materials coated composite fabrics between experimental results and the predicted results from post-processing calculation by finite element method.