<p> Greetings all,</p><p>I am a fourth year Mechanical Engineering student working under Professor Ian Beausoleil-Morrison here at Carleton University for our efficient home design project. </p><p>My group and I have been using ESP-r as our building simulation tool but recently we have run into a bit of a road-block when it comes to incorperating phase change materials. </p><p>I used the ESP-r active materials interface to create an active materials file using the following properties:<br />Melting Temperature (C): 25<br />Solidification Temp (C): 21<br />Thermal Conductivity (J/kg): 0.411 For both liquid and solid phase<br />Specific Heat (J/kg*K): 1225<br />Latent Heat component A (J/kg*K^2): 0<br />Latent Heat Component B (J/kg*K): 7500</p><p>As I understand it, one must position the PCM in the middle of a construction layer. My construction has 3 layers and as such I have chosen node 6 for the PCM placement.</p><p>First Question: Does the PCM take over the layer, meaning does it swap out my slate tile properties for the PCM properties?</p><p>Having created this file and run a simulation, there is no difference in the results. Now this could be the properties of the PCM I choose are such that it would make no difference but I believe that the simulation is not using this active materials file at all. When I restart ESP-r and attempt to view or edit my active materials file ESP-r does not have the file name saved and I have to respecify each time. Perhaps its as simple as adding an active materials file path to the cfg file but I do not know what the proper suffix should be.</p><p>Any help with this Issue would be greatly appreciated.</p><p>Cheers!</p><p>Mike Ford<br /> </p>