Transient Analysis of a Cylindrical Heat Pipe Considering Different Wick Structures

Abstract

Heat pipes have been shown to be one of the most efficient passive cooling devices for electronic cooling. Only a handful of studies were capable of solving transient performances of heat pipes based on realistic assumptions. A segregated finite volume base scheme using SIMPLE algorithm is used along with system pressurization and overall mass balance to solve mass transfer at the interface, continuity, momentum and energy equations. The fluid flow and heat transfer are solved throughout the wick and vapor core and no assumptions are made at the locations where evaporation and condensations occur. Water is the working fluid and variable densities are used for both liquid and vapor phases to account for continuity at the interface as well as inside of wick and vapor core. The wick is modeled as a non-homogeneous porous media and the effective thermal conductivities and viscous properties are calculated for each type of structure separately using the available relations from the literature. In this study, an axisymmetric two-dimensional solver for cylindrical heat pipe is developed using FLUENT package with the help of User Defined Functions (UDFs) and User Defined Scalar (UDS). The model is tested for grid and time step independency and the results show the stability and accuracy of the proposed method. The numerical results of the present study were in good agreement with the data from previous numerical and experimental studies available in the literature. Additionally, two different wick structures were studied to determine its effect on the thermal performance of heat pipes.