Parallel Heat Transfer Model of a Panel with Phase Change Material for Thermal Storage Applications Computed on Graphics Processing Units
Phase change materials have a wide range of application including thermal energy storage in building structures, solar air collectors, heat storage units and exchangers. Such applications often utilize a commercially produced phase change material enclosed in a thin panel (container) made of aluminum. A parallel 1D heat transfer model of a container with phase change material was developed by means of the control volume and effective heat capacity methods. The parallel implementation in the CUDA computing architecture allows the model for running on graphics processing units which makes the model very fast in comparison to traditional models computed on a single CPU. The paper presents the model implementation and results of computational model benchmarking carried out with the use of high-level and low-level GPUs NVIDIA.