Although solar energy is a clean and abundant resource, it has an unstable nature. It is demonstrated that latent thermal energy storage (LTES) systems have been an excellent way to utilize solar energy fully and widely. However, LTES has the problem of insufficient thermal conductivity. For this reason, it is inevitable to consider effective methods to intensify the thermal conductivity of LTES system. In the current study, experiment and numerical simulation are used to study the influence of non-uniform metal foams on heat transfer during phase transition. In this study, a horizontal shell-and-tube LTES test system is established. Moreover, the phase change melting rate of radially filled metal foams with different porosity gradients is compared. According to the numerical simulation results of phase interface, velocity field and temperature field, natural convection can accelerate the melting of PCM. However, there is no distinct effect on the solidification process. When the equivalent porosity is 0.94, the optimal combination (melting process is 0.84-0.92-0.99 and solidification process is 0.87-0.94-0.97), compared with the uniform structure, can shorten the total consumption time by 9.7% and 6.2%, respectively. •The radial positive gradient structure accelerates the melting, but it has little effect on the solidification.•In the current study, the optimal melting/solidification combinations are 0.84-0.92-0.99 and 0.87–0.94-0.97, respectively.•The optimized design of metal foam gradient can reduce the cost of mobile thermal storage system.