A correlation of the convective heat transfer coefficient between an air flow and a phase change material plate

This paper provides a new correlation to determine the heat transfer coefficient between an air flow and a plate made of phase change material (PCM). This correlation was built for the simulation of heat storage units containing PCM plates subjected to an inlet temperature step. The presented correlation has the following form: N u x , t P C M = N u P S M · f P C M . The first term NuPSM is for a plate made of traditional material. The term fPCM is a perturbation due to the phase change in the plate. Each term depends on 5 non-dimensional parameters. One of them represents the advance in the total heating or cooling process, in order to take into account the transient evolution of the convective coefficient. The correlations are built using the Least Squares Method, from series of CDF simulation data. The shape of the perturbation fPCM reveals a complex evolution of the temperature repartition in the PCM plate. Finally, a nodal model of the plate has been developed in order to test the provided new correlation and other correlations available in the literature. The results obtained with the present correlation show better agreements with the CFD results, which make this correlation suitable for the simulation of PCM heat storage systems.