A Capillary-Wick Heat Pipe Fabricated on a Plastic Board (Fundamental Experiments on Heat Transport Characteristics)

Author(s):  
Yasushi Koito ◽  
Hiroyuki Maehara ◽  
Daisuke Shimada ◽  
Toshio Tomimura

A capillary-wick heat pipe having the dimensions of 5.0 mm × 5.0 mm × 100 mm (length) is fabricated on a surface of a plastic board, and the experimental investigations are conducted on the operational characteristics of the heat pipe. Plastics are easy to manufacturing, lightweight, low cost, flexible, and besides, the present study aims at the phase-change heat transfer inside the plastic board. A sintered copper powder and water are used as the wick structure and the working fluid of the heat pipe, respectively. In experiments, an evaporator section of the heat pipe is heated by a heater while a condenser section is water-cooled by a heat sink. A heat input and a liquid volume inside the heat pipe are changed, and the temperature distribution of the heat pipe is measured by thermocouples. Moreover, a one-dimensional thermal circuit model is made to evaluate the effective thermal conductivity of the heat pipe. From the experimental results, the continuous phase-change heat transfer inside the plastic board and its effectiveness are confirmed. It is also revealed that the effective thermal conductivity of the heat pipe is 854 W/(m·K) in maximum under the present experimental conditions.

Author(s):  
Yasushi Koito ◽  
Hiroyuki Maehara ◽  
Toshio Tomimura

As a first step to develop an electronic wiring board in which micro or miniature heat pipes are internally fabricated, the experimental and analytical studies are performed on a wickless gravity-assisted heat pipe, namely thermosyphon, fabricated on a surface of an acrylic resin board. This proposal aims at performing a phase-change heat transfer inside an electronic wiring board having a low thermal conductivity. In experiments, the evaporator section of the heat pipe is heated by a heater while the condenser section is water-cooled by a heat sink. Water is used as a working fluid. Changing a heat input and a liquid volume ratio inside the heat pipe, the temperature distribution is measured by thermocouples and then compared to the case where the working fluid is not charged. Moreover, the simple model of the heat pipe is made based on a thermal resistance network, and the analysis is performed on a phase-change heat transfer and a conductive heat transfer inside the resin board having the heat pipe. The effective thermal conductivity of the heat pipe is evaluated. Although this study is an initial stage, the operational and the heat transfer characteristics of the resin board having the heat pipe are confirmed.


Author(s):  
Fumihiko Hideyama ◽  
Shuto Nonoshita ◽  
Yasushi Koito ◽  
Toshio Tomimura

A vapor chamber is a flat-plate heat pipe, where a cooled (condenser) section is much larger than a heated (evaporator) section, and has been used as a heat spreader to enhance the cooling of electronic devices. An objective of this study is to integrate the vapor chamber into a polycarbonate board. Plastic materials are easy to manufacturing, light weight, low cost, flexible, and then the present study aims at performing a phase-change heat transfer and a heat spreading inside the polycarbonate board. A sintered copper powder and water are used as a wick structure and a working fluid, respectively. In experiments, the heat is applied by a heater while the cooling water is circulated between a thermostatic bath and a cooling jacket. The experiments are conducted changing a liquid volume and a heat input, and the transient temperature distribution of the vapor chamber is measured by thermocouples. For comparison, the experiment is also conducted where the working fluid is not charged into the vapor chamber. Moreover, based on a thermal resistance network, an analytical model of the vapor chamber is made and the analysis is performed on the phase-change heat transfer inside the vapor chamber. From the experimental and analytical results, the heat transfer characteristics of the polymer-based vapor chamber and the effectiveness of the phase-change heat transfer are confirmed.


Author(s):  
Ayushman Singh ◽  
Srikanth Rangarajan ◽  
Leila Choobineh ◽  
Bahgat Sammakia

Abstract This work presents an approach to optimally designing a composite with thermal conductivity enhancers (TCEs) infiltrated with phase change material (PCM) based on figure of merit (FOM) for thermal management of portable electronic devices. The FOM defines the balance between effective thermal conductivity and energy storage capacity. In present study, TCEs are in the form of a honeycomb structure. TCEs are often used in conjunction with PCM to enhance the conductivity of the composite medium. Under constrained composite volume, the higher volume fraction of TCEs improves the effective thermal conductivity of the composite, while it reduces the amount of latent heat storage simultaneously. The present work arrives at the optimal design of composite for electronic cooling by maximizing the FOM to resolve the stated trade-off. In this study, the total volume of the composite and the interfacial heat transfer area between the PCM and TCE are constrained for all design points. A benchmarked two-dimensional direct CFD model was employed to investigate the thermal performance of the PCM and TCE composite. Furthermore, assuming conduction-dominated heat transfer in the composite, a simplified effective numerical model that solves the single energy equation with the effective properties of the PCM and TCE has been developed. The effective thermal conductivity of the composite is obtained by minimizing the error between the transient temperature gradient of direct and simplified model by iteratively varying the effective thermal conductivity. The FOM is maximized to find the optimal volume fraction for the present design.


2015 ◽  
Vol 645-646 ◽  
pp. 1032-1037
Author(s):  
Cong Ming Li ◽  
Yi Luo ◽  
Chuan Peng Zhou ◽  
Liang Liang Zou ◽  
Xiao Dong Wang ◽  
...  

There are several factors that affect heat transfer of heat pipe, for example, structure dimension, filling ratio and vacuum degree of charging. This paper studied the thermal conductivity of micro flat heat pipes (MFHPs) with different structure dimension and with different filling ratio, when the charging vacuum degree of MFHP was decided. When electric power was 2W or 4W, MFHPs with parallel grooves and nonparallel grooves, charged by working fluid with different filling ratio, were carried out. And the filling ratio is 30%, 40% and 50%, respectively. The better thermal performance of MFHP can be evaluated by lower thermal resistance and higher effective thermal conductivity. The experiment results show that MFHP has the highest effective thermal conductivity when the filling ratio is 40%; and the thermal performance of MFHP with nonparallel structure in axial direction is better than that of MFHP with parallel structure.


Author(s):  
Haizhen Xian ◽  
Dengying Liu ◽  
Yongping Yang ◽  
Xiaoze Du

In this paper, experimental investigations on the heat transfer characteristics of OHP with ethanol as working fluid were conducted. The experimental results show that there exists a necessary temperature difference between evaporator and condenser section to keep the heat pipe working. The minimum temperature differences for the optimal operating conditions varied from 1.5 to 2.0°C. The maximum effective conductivity achieved could reach up to 111kW/m•°C. The heat pipe was obviously affected by the filling ratio in some cases but the influence law is irregular and related to inclination angles and heating temperatures. Not all OHPs operated well in the limiting case of a zero inclination angle. In most cases, the optimal value of the inclination angle went up when the heating temperature increased. An appropriate high heating temperature is helpful for the OHP to achieved excellent performances. The startup temperature varied from 40°C to 50°C without considering the horizontal heating mode.


Author(s):  
Jorge L. Alvarado ◽  
Charles Marsh ◽  
Curt Thies ◽  
Guillermo Soriano ◽  
Paritosh Garg

In the last decade, microencapsulated phase change material (MPCM) slurries have been proposed and studied as novel coolants for heat transfer applications. Such applications include electronics cooling, and secondary coolants in air conditioning systems among others. Experiments have shown that MPCM’s increase the overall thermal capacity of thermal systems by taking advantage of the phase change material’s latent heat of fusion. However, research has also shown that the overall heat transfer coefficient is diminished due to a reduction in the effective thermal conductivity and increased viscosity of the slurry. For this reason, there is an urgent need to modify the content of microcapsules containing phase change material to increase their effective thermal conductivity and the overall heat transport process. Our solution consists of increasing the thermal conductivity of MPCM by adding carbon nanotubes to the shell and core of the microcapsules. Carbon nanotubes have shown to increase the thermal conductivity of liquids by 40% or more in recent experiments. In this paper, MPCM slurry containing octadecane as phase change material and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) embedded in the capsule material and core are compared with pure water as heat transfer fluid. Thermal and physical properties of MPCM slurry containing carbon nanotubes were determined using a differential scanning calorimeter and concentric viscometer, respectively. Experimental convective heat transfer coefficient data for MWCNT aqueous suspensions under laminar flow and constant heat flux were determined using a bench-top heat transfer loop. Experimental heat transfer results are presented.


Author(s):  
Maryam Shafahi ◽  
Kevin Anderson ◽  
Ali Borna ◽  
Michael Lee ◽  
Alex Kim ◽  
...  

This paper reviews the improvement in the heat pipe’s performance using nanofluid as the working fluid. The use of nanofluid enhances heat transfer in the heat pipe due to its improved thermo-physical properties, such as a higher thermal conductivity. Nanofluids proved to be the innovative approach to a variety of applications, such as electronics, medical instruments, and heat exchangers. The influence of different nanoparticles on heat pipe’s performance has been studied. Utilizing nanofluid as the working fluid leads to a significant reduction in heat pipe thermal resistance, an increase in maximum heat transfer, and an improvement of heat pipe thermal performance.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Siahpush ◽  
James O’Brien ◽  
John Crepeau

A detailed experimental and analytical study has been performed to evaluate how copper porous foam (CPF) enhances the heat transfer performance in a cylindrical solid/liquid phase change thermal energy storage system. The CPF used in this study had a 95% porosity and the phase change material (PCM) was 99% pure eicosane. The PCM and CPF were contained in a vertical cylinder where the temperature at its radial boundary was held constant, allowing both inward freezing and melting of the PCM. Detailed quantitative time-dependent volumetric temperature distributions and melt/freeze front motion and shape data were obtained. As the material changed phase, a thermal resistance layer built up, resulting in a reduced heat transfer rate between the surface of the container and the phase change front. In the freezing analysis, we analytically determined the effective thermal conductivity of the combined PCM/CPF system and the results compared well to the experimental values. The CPF increased the effective thermal conductivity from 0.423W∕mKto3.06W∕mK. For the melting studies, we employed a heat transfer scaling analysis to model the system and develop heat transfer correlations. The scaling analysis predictions closely matched the experimental data of the solid/liquid interface position and Nusselt number.


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