Numerical Sumulation of Phase Change Material in the Application of Increasing Indoor Thermal Comfort

The Phase Change Material (PCM) will produce or release massive heat energy when processes phase change which is called latent heat. PCM can use the nature to reduce temperature oscillation amplitude or even achieve constant temperature； Therefore, phase change material is used widely in the electronic engineering, the clothing, the building.
The application of phase change material in building is popular in Western country than Eastern country. Because of the Western country’s temperature during night time in autumn and winter is so cold, the power consumption of heating is very large. So they use the phase change material for the purpose of raising temperature in nighttime. The phase change material will absord massive quantity of heats by latent heat in daytinme and in the night release massive quantity of heat, achieves the effect of heating air. But Taiwan is in the subtropics climatic region, the majr problem is overheated in summer, causes the massive power consumption of air condition. Therefore the phase change material used in Taiwan must design to release massive quantity of heats during nighttime and absorb massive quantity of heats in daytime, achieves temperature decrease effect. The purpose of using phase change material in building is opposite to Western country.
Therefore this research mainly discusses the phase change material application eliminates the thermal effect in building structures. Using commercial finite element software ABAQUS simulates the model which have the proper boundary conditions. First discusses the effet of phase change material applied to building in Taiwan climate. The effect is regarding the Power Consumption Index, PCI, defined in this thesis. Then the research will discuss some parameters of phase change material including the position of PCM and latent of PCM and melting temperature of PCM and the quantities of PCM, in order to get the best effect of PCM. After I know how to desing PCM, I will compare to the insulated material, EPS. When I finish the research of phase change material applied to building in Taiwan climate, I also apply PCM to building in other climate to find the effect of phase change material in different climate.
In addition, this research will use the power consumption index of each yaer in Taiwan as an index, and find out an approximate temperature functions which use average temperature and maximum temperature and minimum temperature of each month as parameter. So I can use these three parameters to find an approximate temperature curve. Using this curve in ABAQUS, I can get the closed power consumption index comparing to the true climate data result.