Composite phase change materials for ultra fast thermal regulation

Phase change materials can be tailored to meet a specific application’s design requirements and constraints. More specifically, applications operating under transient pulsed loads require a phase change material (PCM) that can act as a thermal buffer to quickly absorb dissipated heat from the heat source and effectively store/release the absorbed energy during peak/low loading conditions. A three-component composite containing two phase change materials (one organic, with high latent heat, and one metallic, with high thermal conductivity and sufficient latent heat) with similar melting points and a high thermal conductivity material can be synthesized to achieve a balance between energy density and power density. In this project, we will conduct numerical simulations to assess and compare the performance of a three-component composite PCM to a two-component composite PCM. We will also perform an experiment where we synthesize an organic PCM with a metallic PCM and enclose the composite in a high thermal conductivity material and compare these results with our numerical findings