Heat Storage Performance of the Prefabricated Hollow Core Concrete Deck Element with Integrated Microencapsulated Phase Change Material: Experimental vs theoretical thermal properties of PCM concrete

The paper presents the numerically calculated dynamic heat storage capacity of the prefabricated hollow core concrete deck element with and without microencapsulated phase change material (PCM). The reference deck is the ordinary deck made of standard concrete material and that is broadly used in many emerging buildings. The new concrete deck with microencapsulated PCM is the standard deck on which one more layer with PCM concrete was added and at the same time the latent heat storage was introduced to the construction. The challenge to simulate the performance of the new deck with PCM concrete or the building with such a deck is that the thermal properties of such a new material are not yet well defined. The results presented in the paper include models in which PCM concrete material properties such as thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity were theoretically calculated using weight average of thermal properties of standard concrete material and pure PCM. Consequently, the numerical models of the decks were updated with the experimentally determined thermal properties of PCM concrete after these two materials have been combined into one material. Finally, the heat storage of the decks with theoretically and experimentally determined thermal properties of PCM concrete were compared with each other.