Theoretical thermal study of wire-plate mini heat pipes

In the present study, a theoretical thermal study of a wire-plate mini heat pipe is presented. The wire-plates are considered grooved type heat pipes. Two models are used: a hydrodynamic model (taken from literature) and a thermal model, developed in the present paper. The influence of vapor channel hydraulic diameter and evaporator length are determined by the hydrodynamic model, which takes into account the geometry of the liquid layer in the groove. For the thermal model, for both evaporator and condenser, the liquid film cross section area is divided into three regions, represented by three resistances in parallel. Each one of these resistances is individually modeled and are connected by thermal circuit, which is used to predict the temperature distribution along the heat pipe. A parametric study of the influence of the major design parameters in the heat transfer performance of the device is performed. In addition, the maximum heat transfer capacity of the heat pipe, defined as the heat power level beyond which the overall thermal resistance starts to increase sharply, are determined by the models. An experimental setup was built and several wire-plate heat pipes were constructed and tested. The resulting data compared favorably with the models. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.