Experiments and Analyses on Heat Transfer Characteristics from a Solid Wall to a Strip-ShapedWick Structure

Centered or striped wick structures have been used to develop ultrathin heat pipes.Differing from traditional heat pipes,the centered or striped wick structures leave noncontact container surfaces with the wick structure.In this study,experiments andnumerical analyseswere conductedtoinvestigate the influenceof thesenoncontact surfaces.In the experiments,a strip-shaped wick structure was placed vertically,the top was sandwiched between wider rods and the bottom was immersed in a working fluid.The rod width was greater than the wick width;thus,noncontact surfaces were left between the rod and the wick structure.The heat was applied from the rod to the wick structure,and the evaporation heat transfer characteristics of the working fluid from the wick structure were evaluated.Water was used as the working fluid.The experiments were conducted by varying the rod and wick widths.The experimental results were obtained when the wick structures were placed separately.In the numerical analyses,the temperature and heat flux distributions in the rod were obtained.From the experimental and numerical results,it was confirmed that the noncontact surfaces caused the heat flux in the rod near both surfaces of the wick structure to concentrate,which increased the evaporation thermal resistance of the wick structure.A reduction in the noncontact surface area by increasing the wick width was found to be effective in decreasing the evaporation thermal resistance and increasing themaximumheat transfer rate of the wick structure.The separation of the wick structure increased the evaporation surface area.However,its effectiveness was limited when the heat transfer rate was small.

Evaporation Heat Transfer Characteristics from a Sintered Powder Wick Structure Sandwiched between Two Solid Walls

An ultra-thin flattened heat pipe has been developed with a centered wick structure.This structure is essential to make the heat pipe thinner.However,the centered wick structure reduces the evaporation and condensation surface areas of the wick structure because it is sandwiched between heat pipe walls.In this study,because detailed discussion has not been made,heat transfer experiments were conducted for the wick structure sandwiched between two solid walls.This study focused on the evaporation heat transfer characteristics from the sandwiched wick structure.The experiments were conducted with three wick structures,that is,strip-shaped sintered copper powders with thicknesses of 0.5,1.0,and 1.5 mm.Water was used as working fluid.The capillary pumping performance,that is,the liquid lifting velocities of the three wick structures were the same.The experimental results of the three wick structures were compared regarding the relation between the evaporation heat transfer rate and the superheat of the working fluid.The heat transfer experiments were also conducted when one of the solid walls was removed from the wick structure.It was confirmed that even if the wick structure was sandwiched between the solid walls,sufficient evaporation of the working fluid occurred from the thin sides of the wick structure.