RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article T1 A Numerical Simulation of an Experimental Melting Process of a Phase-Change Material without Convective Flows A1 García Fuente, Manuel A1 González Peña, David A1 Alonso Tristán, Cristina K1 PCM K1 Convective flows K1 CFD K1 Numerical simulation K1 Experimental K1 Ingeniería eléctrica K1 Electric engineering AB The melting process of lauric acid in a square container heated from the top surface wasnumerically studied from an experimental case. Knowledge of this process is of special interestfor computationally efficient modeling systems, such as PCM-enhanced photovoltaic panels inhorizontal positions or energy storage using PCM embedded on flat surfaces. In these systems, thegeometric arrangement of the PCM hinders the fluid-phase movements through natural convection,which slows the melting process and can cause overheating in the fluid phase. Using Ansys FluentSoftware, three different approaches and two simulation methods, enthalpy-porosity and effectiveheat capacity, were developed for the numerical study. The results were compared with experimentalmeasurements in a successful evaluation of the accuracy of computational fluid dynamics simulations.It could be observed that the effective heat capacity method presented significant advantages over theenthalpy-porosity method, since similar accuracy results were obtained, and a lower computationalcost was required. PB MDPI YR 2022 FD 2022-04 LK http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7272 UL http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7272 LA eng NO The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Regional Government of Castilla y León under the “Support Program for Recognized Research Groups of Public Universities of Castilla y León” (BU021G19) and the Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation under the R+D+i state program “Challenges Research Projects” (Ref. RTI2018-098900-B-I00). DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos RD 18-abr-2024