Unified formulation for contact melting inside a symmetric enclosure

作者:Chen Wenzhen*; Zhao YuanSong; Luo Lei; Sun Fengrui
来源:Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, 2008, 22(2): 227-233.
DOI:10.2514/1.30711

摘要

The contact melting progress of phase-change material inside the symmetric enclosure with a continuous boundary is generally studied, and a unified treatment for the heat transfer is proposed. The mathematical expressions of the dimensionless film thickness, melting rate, dimensionless time to complete melting, and Nusselt number for the contact melting processes are derived generally, which can be used for the analysis of the contact melting inside different geometric enclosures. By applying the expressions to the analysis of contact melting inside the cylindrical and elliptical tubes, as well as the spherical capsule, the concrete methods and steps are given. It is found that some major results in the published literature are easily deduced and unified in this paper.