scholarly journals Staying Cool

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (07) ◽  
pp. 64-65
Author(s):  
Calvin C. Silverstein

This article reviews heat pipes that address thermal management problems inside high-performance aircraft engines. Higher performance engines demand that compressors develop higher pressure ratios which, in turn, result in higher temperatures at the entrance to the combustor. CCS Associates of Bethel Park, PA, proposes tackling the problem by using pipes to distribute heat more effectively throughout the combustor. The heat pipe liner must handle both acceleration and vibration. The heat pipe arrays, including half-thickness webs, can be fabricated into gas-side and air-side halves by extrusion, forging, stamping, chemical milling, or some combination of methods. The liquid flow channel would be formed as an integral part of the gas-side valves.

Author(s):  
Pramod Chamarthy ◽  
H. Peter J. de Bock ◽  
Boris Russ ◽  
Shakti Chauhan ◽  
Brian Rush ◽  
...  

Heat pipes have been gaining a lot of popularity in electronics cooling applications due to their ease of operation, reliability, and high effective thermal conductivity. An important component of a heat pipe is the wick structure, which transports the condensate from condenser to evaporator. The design of wick structures is complicated by competing requirements to create high capillary driving forces and maintain high permeability. While generating large pore sizes will help achieve high permeability, it will significantly reduce the wick’s capillary performance. This study presents a novel experimental method to simultaneously measure capillary and permeability characteristics of the wick structures using fluorescent visualization. This technique will be used to study the effects of pore size and gravitational force on the flow-related properties of the wick structures. Initial results are presented on wick samples visually characterized from zero to nine g acceleration on a centrifuge. These results will provide a tool to understand the physics involved in transport through porous structures and help in the design of high performance heat pipes.


Author(s):  
Kailyn Cage ◽  
Monifa Vaughn-Cooke ◽  
Mark Fuge ◽  
Briana Lucero ◽  
Dusan Spernjak ◽  
...  

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes allow for complex geometries to be developed in a cost- and time-efficient manner in small-scale productions. The unique functionality of AM offers an ideal collaboration between specific applications of human variability and thermal management. This research investigates the intersection of AM, human variability and thermal management in the development of a military helmet heat exchanger. A primary aim of this research was to establish the effectiveness of AM components in thermal applications based on material composition. Using additively manufactured heat pipe holders, the thermal properties of a passive evaporative cooler are tested for performance capability with various heat pipes over two environmental conditions. This study conducted a proof-of-concept design for a passive helmet heat exchanger, incorporating AM components as both the heat pipe holders and the cushioning material targeting internal head temperatures of ≤ 35°C. Copper heat pipes from 3 manufactures with three lengths were analytically simulated and experimentally tested for their effectiveness in the helmet design. A total of 12 heat pipes were tested with 2 heat pipes per holder in a lateral configuration inside a thermal environmental chamber. Two 25-hour tests in an environmental chamber were conducted evaluating temperature (25°C, 45°C) and relative humidity (25%, 50%) for the six types of heat pipes and compared against the analytical models of the helmet heat exchangers. Many of the heat pipes tested were good conduits for moving the heat from the head to the evaporative wicking material. All heat pipes had Coefficients of Performance under 3.5 when tested with the lateral system. Comparisons of the analytical and experimental models show the need for the design to incorporate a re-wetting reservoir. This work on a 2-dimensional system establishes the basis for design improvements and integration of the heat pipes and additively manufactured parts with a 3-dimensional helmet.


Author(s):  
Garrett A. Glover ◽  
Yongguo Chen ◽  
Annie Luo ◽  
Herman Chu

The current work is a survey of applied applications of passive 2-phase technologies, such as heat pipe and vapor chamber, in heat sink designs with thin base for electronic cooling. The latest improvements of the technologies and manufacturing processes allow achievable heat sink base thickness of 3 mm as compared to around 5 mm previously. The key technical challenge has been on maintaining structural integrity for adequate hollow space for the working fluid vapor in order to retain high performance while reducing the thickness of the overall vapor chamber or flattened heat pipe. Several designs of thin vapor chamber base heat sink and embedded heat pipe heat sink from different vendors are presented for a moderate power density application of a 60 W, 13.2 mm square heat source. Numerous works have been published by both academia and commercial applications in studying the fundamental science of passive 2-phase flow technologies; their performance has been compared to solid materials, like aluminum and copper. These works have established the merits of using heat pipes and vapor chambers in electronic cooling. The intent of this paper is to provide a methodical approach to help to accelerate the process in evaluating the arrays of different commercial designs of these devices in our product design cycle. In this paper, the trade-offs between the different types of technologies are discussed for parameters such as performance advantages, physical attributes, and some cost considerations. This is a bake-off evaluation of the complete heat sink solutions from the various vendors and not a fundamental research of vapor chambers and heat pipes — for that, it is best left to the vendors and universities.


Author(s):  
Tien-Chien Jen ◽  
Rajendra Jadhav

Thermal management using heat pipes is gaining significant attention in past decades. This is because of the fact that it can be used as an effective heat sink in very intricate and space constrained applications such as in electronics cooling or turbine blade cooling where high heat fluxes are involved. Extensive research has been done in exploring various possible applications for the use of heat pipes as well as understanding and modeling the behavior of heat pipe under those applications. One of the possible applications of heat pipe technology is in machining operations, which involves a very high heat flux being generated during the chip generation process. Present study focuses on the thermal management of using a heat pipe in a drill for a drilling process. To check the feasibility and effectiveness of the heat pipe drill, structural and thermal analyses are performed using Finite Element Analysis. Finite Element Software ANSYS was used for this purpose. It is important for any conceptual design to be made practical and hence a parametric study was carried out to determine the optimum geometry size for the heat pipe for a specific standard drill.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Asias ◽  
M. Shusser ◽  
A. Leitner ◽  
A. Nabi ◽  
G. Grossman

To investigate the feasibility of using heat pipes in airborne systems, heat pipe performance at large axial accelerations in the range of 3–12g was studied experimentally. The heat input chosen corresponded to the optimal heat pipe performance without acceleration. When applied against the direction of the liquid flow (unfavorable orientation) the accelerations were large enough to exceed the capillary limit, as was seen from the strong increase in the evaporator temperature. The influence of accelerations in the direction of the liquid flow (favorable orientation) was found to be more complicated. While at the acceleration of 3g the heat pipe performance improved, at higher accelerations instability developed with resulting large-amplitude oscillations of the evaporator temperature. The instability found in these experiments is thought to be related to the geyser effect observed in thermosyphons.


Author(s):  
Ronald Warzoha ◽  
Amy S. Fleischer

The thermal management of power electronics presents a significant challenge to thermal engineers due to high power loads coupled with small footprints. Inadequate thermal dissipation of these loads can lead to excessively high equipment temperatures and subsequent system failure. In this study, a unique power electronics-based transformer, called the intelligent universal transformer (IUT), is thermally analyzed using the computational fluid dynamics software ICEPAK. The objective of this work is to examine the use of a finned heat pipe array for the power electronics in the IUT. A design sensitivity study was performed to determine the effect of the number of fins attached to the heat pipe array, the number of heat pipes in the heat pipe array, and the fin material on the steady-state operating temperature of the power electronics. It was determined that a set of 33 copper fins attached to an array of 36 heat pipes on each side of the containment unit is sufficient for continuous operation of the power electronics. This analysis and thermal management solution will be applicable not only to this situation but also to other high density power electronics applications.


Author(s):  
Chanwoo Park ◽  
Aparna Vallury ◽  
Jon Zuo ◽  
Jeffrey Perez ◽  
Paul Rogers

The paper discusses an advanced Hybrid Two-Phase Loop (HTPL) technology for electronics thermal management. The HTPL combined active mechanical pumping with passive capillary pumping realizing a reliable yet high performance cooling system. The evaporator developed for the HTPL used 3-dimensional metallic wick structures to enhance boiling heat transfer by passive capillary separation of liquid and vapor phases. Through the testing using various prototype hybrid loops, it was demonstrated that the hybrid loops were capable of removing high heat fluxes from multiple heat sources with large surface areas up to 135cm2 and 10kW heat load. Because of the passive capillary phase separation, the hybrid loop operation didn’t require any active flow control of the liquid in the evaporator, even at highly transient and asymmetrical heat inputs between the evaporators. These results represent the significant advance over state-of-the-art heat pipes, loop heat pipes and evaporative spray cooling devices in terms of performance, robustness and simplicity.


Author(s):  
Randeep Singh ◽  
Tien Nguyen

Abstract This present paper investigates the potential of loop heat pipe (LHP), with respect to technological merits and application niche, in automotive thermal management. Broadly, LHP design and applicability for hot spot cooling in electronics (local dissipation), and for heat transport over longer distances (remote dissipation) has been proposed and discussed in detail. The basic module in these applications includes loop heat pipe with different shapes and sizing factors. Two types of LHP design have being tested and results discussed. The miniature version, with 10 mm thick and flat evaporator, for cooling ECU with 70 W chipset while keeping source temperature below 100 °C limit was evaluated. Two larger versions with cylindrical evaporator, 25 mm diameter & 150 mm length, and heat transfer distances of 250 mm and 1000 mm respectively were tested for power electronics and battery cooling, with more than 500 W transport capabilities in gravity field. In conclusions, loop heat pipes will provide an energy efficient passive thermal control solution for next generation low emission automotive, particularly for electric vehicles which have high level electrifications and more definitive cooling requirements.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document