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 c haracteristics of a pulsating heated vertical plate sandwiched between a su bstrate 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 consider ed in the present study is n-Octadecane. In the finite-difference simulatio n, the two-dimensional buoyancy-driven fluid flows developed in both the wa ter-filled subenclosure and the molten PCM region of the PCM-filled subencl osure were modeled as laminar Newtonian fluid flow adhering to the Boussine sq approximation. Meanwhile, two-dimensional conduction is accounted for th e plate heater as well as the solid PCM zone. Numerical results are present ed to unveil the cooling behavior of the pulsating heat-generating plate th rough the PCM substrate and water-filled enclosure. Results of the parametr ic simulations reveal that the water layer has the better capability of hea t dissipation than the PCM substrate. Heat dissipation from the plate throu gh 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.