Influence of wall thermal performance on the contribution efficiency of the Phase-Change Material (PCM) layer

Abstract

Integrating Phase-Change Material (PCM) in building walls has been an effective technological method to improve wall thermal performance, but its contribution efficiency has been impacted by the thermal performance of original walls. To explore the influence laws of wall thermal performance on the contribution efficiency of the PCM layer and then find the suitable application of the PCM layer, the numerical simulation verified by an experiment was done for wall physical models with different thermal performance. Experimental results revealed that the temperature amplitudes of the inner surface and indoor air were reduced by 25.13 °C and 20.86 °C respectively due to adding the PCM layer in the light-weight building models. Numerical results showed integrating the PCM layer increased the time lag, but this contribution efficiency had the poor correlation with the heat transfer coefficient and the thermal inertia. Moreover, the contribution efficiency from the PCM layer would be increased on the decrement factor and the peak heat flow with an increase of the heat transfer coefficient or reducing the thermal inertia. The core contribution from the PCM layer is not thermal insulation improvement, but thermal adjustment enhancement and thereby, the contribution of integrating the PCM layer was ignored on the average heat flow.

Keywords

• Contribution efficiency
• Thermal performance
• Phase-change material
• Wall property