Conference article

In a recent meeting of IEA’s Annex 23; several members presented their conclusions on the modeling of phase change materials behavior in the context of building applications. These conclusions were in agreement with those of a vast review; involving the survey of more than 250 journal papers; undertaken earlier by the group of École de technologie supérieure. In brief; it can be stated that; at this point; the confidence in reviewed models is too low to use them to predict the future behavior of a building with confidence. Moreover; it was found that overall thermal behaviors of PCM are poorly known; which by itself creates an intrinsic unknown in any model. Models themselves are most of time suspicious as they are often not tested in a very stringent or exhaustive way. In addition; it also appears that modeling parameters are somewhat too simplified to realistically describe the complete physics needed to predict the real life performance of PCMs added to a building. As a result; steps are now taken to create standard model benchmarks that will improve the confidence of the users. Hopefully; following these efforts; confidence will increase and usage of PCM in buildings should be eased.

Phase change material; PCM characterization; Mathematical model; Model validation