Constrained and unconstrained melting performance inside a spherical capsule under the impact of low gravity

The melting process of a phase change material (PCM) inside a capsule can be promising in the thermal management of spacecraft. Such spacecraft operate under various gravity conditions, but previous studies have mostly considered the influence of gravity conditions on the constrained melting process of a PCM and not on its unconstrained melting process. In this study, a numerical model was constructed to comprehensively analyze the constrained and unconstrained melting processes of a PCM inside a spherical capsule under low-gravity conditions. After validation, the model was then applied to investigating the effects of low-gravity conditions on the evolution of velocity, temperature, melt layer thickness, heat transfer, liquid fraction, and total melting time. For the unconstrained melting process, low-gravity conditions weaken buoyancy-driven natural convection and slow down the solid PCM downward trend, thereby limiting the melting rate. In addition, the melt layer thickness does not increase linearly with decreasing gravity. Specifically, the increase in melt layer thickness is smaller by about 1.06 mm when the gravity drops from 0.4g to 0.2g compared to when it drops from 0.2g to 0.1g. The local heat flux in the contact melting area gradually decreases with the reduction of gravity during the unconstrained melting process. During the constrained melting process, notable oscillations in the local heat flux were observed. Decreasing the gravity from g to 0g increased the total melting times of the constrained and unconstrained melting processes by 417% and 621%, respectively.