Experimental investigation and numerical simulation of thermal energy storage in phase change material under different tilt angles of the enclosure

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation of phase change material melting in a rectangular enclosure. The aim of this research is the study of the effect of the tilt angle of the enclosure on the flow structures and the melting rate. In the experimental section, the visualization of the melting process is carried out by the photography of the phase change material through a transparent enclosure. Then, the image processing of the photographs is performed to calculate the instantaneous liquid fractions. The variation of the solid-liquid interface by tilting the enclosure clearly implies the evolution of the flow structures in the liquid phase. Numerical simulation is performed using the enthalpy-porosity approach for tilt angles of 90, 45 and 0o and wall temperatures of 55, 60 and 70 oC. The results show that by decreasing the tilt angle from 90o to 45o and 0o, the melting times are 52% and 37% less than that of the vertical enclosure. Melting time reduction in the inclined enclosure is due to the formation of the vertical flow structures and thermal plums in the liquid phase. By Increasing the Stefan number from 0.36 to 0.43 and 0.55 the thermal energy storage increase by 5.4% and 13.8%, respectively. Also, a correlation is developed to predict the thermal energy storage in the tilt enclosures using nonlinear regression.