Performance simulation of the channel of airborne corrugated plate-fin phase change heat storage heat exchangers

Some airborne electronic devices having high power during their short work cycles will produce tens to hundreds of kilowatts of waste heat. In order to solve their thermal management problem, phase change heat storage heat exchangers are widely used to storage the high-power thermal load in a short time and then release it in a long time. Hence, a research on the heat storage performance of an aluminium alloy three-channel corrugated plate-fin heat exchanger was done based on computer simulation and modeling. Results reveal that there exist three regions within this heat exchanger containing "Low-Efficiency Heat Storage Zone", "High-Efficiency Heat Storage Zone" and "Temperature Control Buffer Zone". In short, the temperature of hot fluid flowing through the heat exchanger usually exhibits a phenomenon of rapid decrease in the middle and slow drop at both ends along the flow direction. It was found that the hot fluid outlet temperature decreases with an increase in the fin height of the phase change material channel, and rises with an increase in the fluid channel fin height or fin pitch of all the channels. In addition, a low temperature-control accuracy period of 2 to 3 seconds during the initial operation was also found.