An experimental and numerical study on the leakage of molten phase change material through a micropore under gravity

Abstract

This work presents an experimental and numerical study on the leakage of phase change materials through a micropore under gravity during the melting process. The effects of the pore size, wettability and physical properties of phase change materials on the packaging performance of composite phase change materials are discussed in details. The leakage process is divided into four stages, including breaking through the pore, wetting, necking and rupture. Dimensional analysis shows that the leakage process is mainly governed by the dimensionless Bond number (Bo) and Ohnesorge number (Oh). The results demonstrate that increasing the pore size significantly enhances the potential of leakage because of the increase of Bo. With a fixed Bo, the leakage can be efficiently suppressed by increasing Oh, which gives rise to a larger viscous resistance. Furthermore, it is discovered that reducing the contact angle could also prevent the leakage, as the larger surface tension is provided.