Numerical Modeling and Experimental Validation of a PCM(Phase Change Material)-based Cascade Cooling System for Enhanced Thermal Management

초록

The thermal enhancement of a PCM-based cascade cooling system using experimental measurements and numerical validation were studied. Two kinds of paraffin with different melting temperatures were used for the PCM-based cascade cooling system. The conceptual design and numerical prediction enabled assessment of the feasibility of the idea proposed in this study. In numerical simulations, the heat loss of a cartridge heater was considered to improve the accuracy of the numerical model. As a result, the difference of heat loss between simulations and experiments was approximately 5.0 % on average in the case of natural convection in air around the fin array of a heat sink. The cooling efficiency was also enhanced by approximately 27.3 % by the multi-layer type PCM-based cascade cooling system. It is expected that the PCM-based heat sink enables both instantaneous absorption of short-term spikes in the energy output from the heat sources and enhanced cooling efficiency by energy cascading among layers of PCMs.