Influence of Incorporating Phase Change Materials on Cementitious System—A Review

Abstract

Phase change materials (PCMs) are gaining more attention in achieving the sustainability and are being widely adopted as a green building material because of their exclusive ability to store latent heat of thermal energy. PCMs have a capacity to minimize the energy loads and to provide thermal comforts in building infrastructures by its iterative cycle of absorbing and releasing the heat energy. The potential need for manipulating the heating and cooling effect in buildings is significantly increasing especially in temperature fluctuating and varied climatic regions. It is for this one of the significant reasons, PCMs are getting pronounced interest by the research fraternity in the development of a thermally effective PCM-based construction material. In this paper, attempts were made to compile the data reported by the previous researchers on the influence of incorporating PCMs in the engineering properties of cementitious system such as slump, compressive strength, flexural strength, density, porosity, water absorption, shrinkage, durability, heat of hydration, specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity. This paper also discusses the most favorable content of PCM addition and effective methods of incorporating PCMs in the cementitious system.