Transient Thermal Performance of Phase-Change Material Infused in Cellular Materials Based on Different Unit Cell Topologies

Abstract

Phase change material (PCM) employment in thermal management and energy storage applications is limited due to their inherently low thermal conductivity. Significant enhancement in the thermal performance of PCMs can be obtained when infused in porous media with high porosity and high solid-phase thermal conductivity. Earlier studies typically employ high porosity aluminum foams obtained via a conventional manufacturing process, commonly known as foaming. A typical representative unit cell of metal foams obtained via foaming process can be of tetrakaidecahedron shape. The conventional manufacturing process of high porosity metal foams offers limited flexibility over unit cell shape, porosity, and pore density. Metal additive manufacturing advancements have the potential to address this manufacturing limitation and provides freedom in the above design domain. To this end, we have explored four different unit cell topologies, viz., octet, tetrakaidecahedron, face-diagonal cube, and cube, for their role in enhancing the transient thermal performance when infused with PCMs. An enthalpy-porosity method has been employed to model the phase-change process for wide range of variables. It has been found that the presence of solid media results in significant enhancement in PCM's thermal performance, and the Octet-shaped unit cell outperformed the other unit cell topologies explored in this study.