An Experimental and Numerical Study on the Effects of the Flat Heat Pipe Wick Structure on Its Thermal Performance

This paper presents an experimental and numerical work on the effect of flat heat pipe construction on the cooling of an electronic component. The flat heat pipe is heated via 1-cm-diameter circular electrical resistance (the evaporator side), and the other side (the condenser side) is cooled by convection through a heat sink. In the experimental work, three types of wick construction are used in the heat pipe: (A) mesh + powder, (B) mesh, and (C) powder. A comparison is performed of the electronic component cooling from the heat pipe, copper block, and open heat pipe constructions. The numerical work studies the effect of wick porosity on the heat pipe performance for different wicks that we could not study experimentally. For forced convection, heat pipe A is more efficient for the electronic component cooling than the copper block and other heat pipe construction. For free convection, the copper block is the most efficient. The maximum variation of the heat pipe temperature is about 19% due to change of the heat pipe construction. When the wick porosity increases, the temperature increases and the pressure decreases. The rectangular groove construction produces the minimum temperature compared to the wrapped screen and packed sphere constructions.