THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND THERMAL MECHANISM OF ALUMINUM NANOPARTICLES/OCTADECANE COMPOSITE PHASE CHANGE MATERIALS FROM MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In this paper, the physical model and simulations of the octadecane in the paraffin and composite materials with different mass fraction of aluminum nanoparticles is established by molecular dynamics method and an analysis of the microscopic mechanism of thermal conductivity was given, in this paper, composite phase change materials were produced by the two-step method of combining chemical dispersion and physical dispersion, the thermal conductivities of composite phase change materials were measured with transient thermal probe method.In the end, a comparison was made among experimental data, theory calculation value and numerical simulation value.Results show that, the thermal conductivities of composite phase change materials increase constantly, along with the content of aluminum nanoparticles increase. Besides, the coefficient of thermal conductivity of composite phase change materials in solid is greater than that in the liquid. Error still exists between the experimental data and the simulation value．