Start-up and steady thermal oscillation of a pulsating heat pipe

As a novel electronic cooling device, pulsating heat pipes (PHPs) have been received attention in recent years. However, literature survey shows that no studies were carried out on the start-up and steady thermal oscillation of the PHPs. In the present paper, the copper capillary tube was being bended to form the snake-shaped PHP. Heating power was applied on the heating section, and transferred to the condensation section and dissipated to the environment by the pure natural convection. The inside diameter of the capillary tube is 2.0 mm and the working fluid is selected as FC-72. A high speed data acquisition system was used to detect the start-up and steady thermal oscillation of the PHP. Two types of the start-up process were observed: a sensible heat receiving start-up process accompanying an apparent temperature overshoot followed by the steady thermal oscillation at low heating power, and a smooth sensible heat receiving start-up process incorporating a smooth oscillation period at high heating power. For the steady thermal oscillation, also two types were found: the random thermal oscillation with a wide frequency range, indicating the random distribution of the vapor plug and liquid slug inside the capillary tube at low heating power, and the quasi periodic thermal oscillation with the same characteristic frequency for both heating section and condensation section, indicating the uniform distribution of the vapor plug and liquid slug inside the capillary tube at high heating power. The power spectral density (PSD) was used to analyze the thermal oscillation waves. The frequency corresponds to the time that a couple of adjacent vapor plug and liquid slug passing through a specific wall surface.