As a highly efficient heat dissipation unit, a micro heat pipe is widely used in high heat flux microelectronic chips, and its thermal resistance is crucial to heat transfer capacity. Through analyses of the structure and heat transfer performance of a circular heat pipe with sintered wick, the theoretical model of total thermal resistance was established on heat transfer theory, and then simplified, finally a testing platform was set up to test for total thermal resistance performance. The testing results show that when the micro heat pipe is in optimal heat transfer state, its total thermal resistance conform well with that from the theoretical model, and its actual thermal resistance is much lower than that of the rod made of the material with perfect thermal conductivity and of the same geometric size. With the increment of heat transfer capability, the total thermal resistance of a micro heat pipe with sintered wick decreases first, then increases and reaches the minimum when it is in the optimal heat transfer state. The greater total thermal resistance in low heat transfer performance is mainly caused by too much working fluid accumulating in evaporator and the lower velocity in vapor cavity, and the greater total thermal resistance in high heat transfer performance is mainly due to the working fluid drying up in condenser. Total thermal resistance is related to many factors, such as thermal conductivity of tube-shell material, wall thickness, wick thickness, copper powders grain size and porosity, the lengths of condenser and evaporator, and the diameter of vapor cavity etc.. Therefore, the structure parameters of a micro heat pipe with sintered wick should be reasonably designed according to the specific conditions to ensure its heat transfer capacity and total thermal resistance to meet the requirements.
Heat transfer performance of a micro heat pipe array for battery thermal management systems
