Numerical investigation of cylindrical heat pipe performance

Abstract

The thermophysical properties of wick microstructures and heat interactions across the wick play a central role in heat pipe performance. It is therefore essential to analyse the wick microstructures. The performance of a cylindrical heat pipe with a screen mesh wick structure is analysed numerically using two-dimensional, axisymmetric, and transient model. A fully implicit, structured collocated finite-volume scheme is used in conjunction with the SIMPLE algorithm to solve Navier–Stokes equations for both, liquid and vapour phases. Present model assumes the wick to be saturated with the liquid and a porous medium formulation is employed for the wick. The evaporation and condensation rates at the diphasic interface are determined using kinetic theory. The model is tested for time step independency and a parametric study is performed by varying the permeability of wick and heat input. The results presented are in good agreement with the data from the previous literature.