Experimental Investigation of the Heat transfer Performance of a Newly Designed Heat Pipe Cold Plate

To deal with multi-heat-source and high-heat-flux heat transfer problem in the confined space within electronic equipments, cold plate equipment employing heat pipe technology is designed. Acetone-aluminum heat pipe construction composed of eight vertical pipes with their upper condensation section and lower evaporation section connected to let the working liquid and vapor flow through each other when the equipment works. The evaporation section of the connective heat pipe construction is embedded in the aluminum-made cold plate and the condensation section of the construction is cooled by cooling water flowing through the water jacket. Sixteen electronic-heating heat sources are evenly arranged on the two bigger vertical surfaces of the cold plate to simulate heat generation of the real array antennas and heat is eventually transferred to cooling water and then to outer environment. The startup performance and temperature evenness performance of the newly-designed heat pipe cold plate equipment are tested under different heat loads, different heat load means, different flow rates of cooling water. Experimental study indicates that the heat pipe cold plate equipment possesses excellent heat-transfer performance, startup performance and temperature evenness and it can solve the high heat-flux problem determining the working reliability of array antennas effectively.