Thermal analysis of heat storage unit equipped with fins employing Galerkin approach

In current study, freezing phenomena within an enclosure with tilted fins has been analyzed. The tank has three cold surfaces and one adiabatic wall and it was filled with NEPCM (mixture of nanoparticles and H2O). To involve the role of style of particles, the conductivity of NEPCM has been estimated according to previous experimental correlation. The formulation of NEPCM properties was based on assumption of homogeneous mixture. Buoyancy term which creates connection between velocity and temperature equations has no sensible impact of solidification. So, energy equation with unsteady source term has been assumed as main equation in current work. Two dimensional tanks have been considered and adaptive grid has been applied. For modeling, finite element method has been implemented and it accuracy was checked according to previous publication. Utilizing the platelet particles instead of sphere can enhance the freezing rate around 5.36% and contours for solid front have been shown this fact, too. Elevating the fraction of particles causes freezing time to decline around 10.74%.