Influence of Drainage and Tilt on Heat Transfer Performance of Array Pulsating Cold End Heat Pipe

A new type of array pulsating cold section heat pipe was proposed, which consists of a T-shaped hot section and an array pulsating cold section. The special structure is available to drain the hot section of the heat pipe, and the installation method of the cold section has an important influence on heat transfer. For this reason, a detailed experimental study of heat transfer performance was carried out in this paper. It was found in the study that a capillary lifting force exists at the outlet of the cold section channel, which prevents the condensate from returning to the hot section, therefore, the hot section has to be drained; the drainage methods are divided into hot-section liquid drainage and hot-section capillary drainage, the latter is significantly better than the former; appropriate increase of the filling rate can improve the drainage effect of liquid drainage. The new heat pipe can adopt two methods, i.e., inclined cold section and vertical cold section. The reflux and heat transfer performance of the inclined cold section outperforms that of the vertical cold section, but the difference between the two methods gradually decreases with the increase of power. Under the same working conditions, the average temperature of the heat source of the new stainless steel heat pipe with the capillary drainage vertical cold section is lower than that of the aluminum fin radiator by 5.79%-10.78%, and the decreasing amplitude increases with the increase of the heating power.