The use of a latent heat storage system using phase change materials (PCMs) is an effective way of storing thermal energy and has the advantages of high-energy storage density and the isothermal nature of the storage process. PCMs have been widely used in latent heat thermal-storage systems for heat pumps, solar engineering, and spacecraft thermal control applications. The uses of PCMs for heating and cooling applications for buildings have been investigated within the past decade. There are large numbers of PCMs that melt and solidify at a wide range of temperatures, making them attractive in a number of applications. This paper also summarizes the investigation and analysis of the available thermal energy storage systems incorporating PCMs for use in different applications.

Review on thermal energy storage with phase change materials and applications

A fixed grid numerical modelling methodology for convection-diffusion mushy region phase-change problems

The melting of pure gallium in a rectangular cavity has been numerically investigated using the enthalpy-porosity approach for modeling combined convection-diffusion phase change. The major advantage of this technique is that it allows a fixed-grid solution of the coupled momentum and energy equations to be undertaken without resorting to variable transformations. In this work, a two-dimensional dynamic model is used and the influence of laminar natural-convection flow on the melting process is considered. Excellent agreement exists between the numerical predictions and experimental results available in the literature. The enthalpy-porosity approach has been found to converge rapidly, and is capable of producing accurate results for both the position and morphology of the melt front at different times with relatively modest computational requirements. These results may be taken to be a sound validation of this technique for modeling isothermal phase changes in metallurgical systems.

Enthalpy-porosity technique for modeling convection-diffusion phase change: application to the melting of a pure metal

Soon after the discovery of carbon nanotubes, it was realized that the theoretically predicted mechanical properties of these interesting structures–including high strength, high stiffness, low density and structural perfection–could make them ideal for a wealth of technological applications. The experimental verification, and in some cases refutation, of these predictions, along with a number of computer simulation methods applied to their modeling, has led over the past decade to an improved but by no means complete understanding of the mechanics of carbon nanotubes. We review the theoretical predictions and discuss the experimental techniques that are most often used for the challenging tasks of visualizing and manipulating these tiny structures. We also outline the computational approaches that have been taken, including ab initio quantum mechanical simulations, classical molecular dynamics, and continuum models. The development of multiscale and multiphysics models and simulation tools naturally arises as a result of the link between basic scientific research and engineering application; while this issue is still under intensive study, we present here some of the approaches to this topic. Our concentration throughout is on the exploration of mechanical properties such as Young’s modulus, bending stiffness, buckling criteria, and tensile and compressive strengths. Finally, we discuss several examples of exciting applications that take advantage of these properties, including nanoropes, filled nanotubes, nanoelectromechanical systems, nanosensors, and nanotube-reinforced polymers. This review article cites 349 references. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1490129#

/pdf/mechanics-of-carbon-nanotubes-4eqt38eq4w.pdf

Mechanics of carbon nanotubes

http://personal.cimat.mx:8181/~jortega/MaterialDidactico/modestoI10/Proyectos/Blum%20%282005%29AntCol.pdf

Ant colony optimization: Introduction and recent trends

An enthalpy formulation for convection/diffusion phase change is developed. The essential feature of this formulation is that latent heat effects are isolated in a source term. This formulation is applicable to a general convection/diffusion phase change, i.e. it is valid in the cases of evolution of latent heat either at an isothermal temperature or over a temperature range. Before implementation of the enthalpy formulation, a technique is required to ensure that velocities predicted to be in a solid region actually take the value zero. Three alternative schemes for achieving this are presented.

The enthalpy formulation and velocity correction schemes are independent of the numerical technique. As an example of how the method can be implemented a control volume numerical discretization is chosen. This implementation is applied to two test problems: a solidification phase change in a cavity under conduction and the same phase change under conduction and natural convection. The natural convection problem is used to compare the performances of the various velocity correction schemes. The results of the problems are in good agreement with available analytical solutions and previous numerical solutions.

An enthalpy method for convection/diffusion phase change

Accurate solutions of moving boundary problems using the enthalpy method

It is widely accepted that volumetric contraction and solidification during the polymerization process of restorative composites in combination with bonding to the hard tissue result in stress transfer and inward deformation of the cavity walls of the restored tooth. Deformation of the walls decreases the size of the cavity during the filling process. This fact has a profound influence on the assumption--raised and discussed in this paper--that an incremental filling technique reduces the stress effect of composite shrinkage on the tooth. Developing stress fields for different incremental filling techniques are simulated in a numerical analysis. The analysis shows that, in a restoration with a well-established bond to the tooth--as is generally desired--incremental filling techniques increase the deformation of the restored tooth. The increase is caused by the incremental deformation of the preparation, which effectively decreases the total amount of composite needed to fill the cavity. This leads to a higher-stressed tooth-composite structure. The study also shows that the assessment of intercuspal distance measurements as well as simplifications based on generalization of the shrinkage stress state cannot be sufficient to characterize the effect of polymerization shrinkage in a tooth-restoration complex. Incremental filling methods may need to be retained for reasons such as densification, adaptation, thoroughness of cure, and bond formation. However, it is very difficult to prove that incrementalization needs to be retained because of the abatement of shrinkage effects.

Does an Incremental Filling Technique Reduce Polymerization Shrinkage Stresses

Parallel Dynamic Graph Partitioning for Adaptive Unstructured Meshes

The graph-partitioning problem is to divide a graph into several pieces so that the number of vertices in each piece is the same within some defined tolerance and the number of cut edges is minimised. Important applications of the problem arise, for example, in parallel processing where data sets need to be distributed across the memory of a parallel machine. Very effective heuristic algorithms have been developed for this problem which run in real-time, but it is not known how good the partitions are since the problem is, in general, NP-complete. This paper reports an evolutionary search algorithm for finding benchmark partitions. A distinctive feature is the use of a multilevel heuristic algorithm to provide an effective crossover. The technique is tested on several example graphs and it is demonstrated that our method can achieve extremely high quality partitions significantly better than those found by the state-of-the-art graph-partitioning packages.

Mark Cross

Papers

An enthalpy method for convection/diffusion phase change

Accurate solutions of moving boundary problems using the enthalpy method

Does an Incremental Filling Technique Reduce Polymerization Shrinkage Stresses

Parallel Dynamic Graph Partitioning for Adaptive Unstructured Meshes

A Combined Evolutionary Search and Multilevel Optimisation Approach to Graph-Partitioning