Manufacturing and Testing of the Liquid Grooves Wick on the Heat Transfer Performance in Loop Heat Pipe with Flat Evaporator

Abstract

It’s the first idea that make liquid grooves on the surface of the wick next to the compensation chamber. By this, the absorbing surface area of working fluid increased and thereby reduce the flow resistance of loop heat pipe with flat evaporator. Results indicated that heat transfer performance increases in the wick structure with liquid grooves on the surface, of which the critical heat load (dryout heat load) reached 175W and the thermal resistance was 0.77 ℃/W. Comparing with the structure without liquid groove under 100℃, the typical operating temperature of electronic devices, our design increased the heat load by 50%. As the reason, wick structure with liquid groove has a great potential to improve the performance of loop heat pipe.