Heat and mass transfer in a flat disc-shaped evaporator of a miniature loop heat pipe

Abstract

The start-up characteristics of a flat miniature loop heat pipe (LHP) with different heat loads were experimentally investigated in this article. Reasons for the difficulties in its start-up were analysed. An overall two-dimensional numerical model was developed to address the heat and mass transfer characteristics in the evaporator of the miniature LHP. The numerical results showed that the performance of the flat miniature LHP could be enhanced by improving the geometrical structure in a limited working space. Effects of thickness of the side wall, height of the compensation chamber, and the wick on system performance were discussed in detail.

Experimental Study of Thermal Performance of a Flat Loop Heat Pipe

“…Experiments have been performed on LHP with heat load of 40 to 80 watt with horizontal and vertical orientations using a flat disc-shaped evaporator design (Maidanik et al 2000). In addition, an experiment was performed to understand the startup process of LHP with flat evaporator (Tu et al 2009). The startup of LHP at low power input have shown high temperature oscillations which led to the LHP to be unstable at low as well as high heat load input (Li et al 2010).…”