On cooling behavior of a vertical plate in a phase change material/water composite enclosure under pulsating heat load

This paper presents a numerical and experimental study concerning cooling characteristics of a pulsating heated vertical plate sandwiched between a substrate of phase change material (PCM) and an enclosure of water, forming a composite vertical rectangular enclosure. The vertical plate is assumed to have a uniform pulsating (on/off) volumetric heat source. The PCM considered in the present study is n-Octadecane. In the finite-difference simulation, the two-dimensional buoyancy-driven fluid flows developed in both the water-filled subenclosure and the molten PCM region of the PCM-filled subenclosure were modeled as laminar Newtonian fluid flow adhering to the Boussinesq approximation. Meanwhile, two-dimensional conduction is accounted for the plate heater as well as the solid PCM zone. Numerical results are presented to unveil the cooling behavior of the pulsating heat-generating plate through the PCM substrate and water-filled enclosure. Results of the parametric simulations reveal that the water layer has the better capability of heat dissipation than the PCM substrate. Heat dissipation from the plate through the PCM substrate is mainly via the latent heat absorption as associated with melting phenomenon. Moreover, numerical results obtained are compared with the corresponding experiments.