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In this work, and in order to improve the thermal execution in building equipment, a numerical simulation of unsteady state heat transfer in three configurations of cavity section is presented to study phase change process of PCM (Phase Change Materials). These configurations are: square, cylindrical and elliptical cavities, which are tested for different thickness. Hence, the present work out to determinate the effect of the configuration and PCM thickness of the cavity section on the thermal behavior during the melting/solidification process. Investigations are based the enthalpy method, using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code to track the melting/solidification process. The comparison between the numerical results and the experimental data of literature shows a good agreement. The results found that the elliptical cavity section with 10 mm thickness of PCM improve significantly the performance the building equipment.
numerical simulation, three configurations, unsteady state, PCM, heat transfer
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