Performance of flat-plate, flexible polymeric pulsating heat pipes at different bending angles

Ali Ahmed Alqahtani, Stuart Edwardson, Marco Marengo, Volfango Bertola

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The heat transfer performance of a flat-plate, flexible polypropylene pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is evaluated experimentally when the device is bent at different angles, and for different layouts of the evaporator and the condenser. Flexible pulsating heat pipes are a passive thermal management technology with important prospective applications in foldable portable electronics, deployable systems (such as cube satellites), soft robotics, and many others. While a number flexible PHPs have been developed in the recent past, to date, there is insufficient information about the influence of the bending angle (conformation) and of the reciprocal positions of the heat sink and source (configuration) on their thermal performance. Several polypropylene PHP prototypes (250 mm ×100 mm ×1.5 mm) with a channel width of 5 mm and different loop geometries were fabricated using selective transmission laser welding technology. Ethanol and FC-72 were used as heat transfer fluids at a filling ratio of 50%. The PHP performance was evaluated through the equivalent thermal resistance of the device, calculated from the surface temperatures of both the evaporator and the condenser during an ascending/descending stepped heat input ramp applied to the evaporator. The experimental results show that conformation arrangements have no significant effect on the thermal performance, however it may affect the PHP start-up.

Original languageEnglish
Article number118948
JournalApplied Thermal Engineering
Volume216
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Jul 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
A. A. Alqahtani gratefully acknowledges a doctoral studentship from the Saudi Ministry for Education (King Khalid University). This work is carried out in the framework of project “TWO-PHASE PASSIVE THERMAL DEVICES FOR DELPLOYABLE SPACE SYSTEMS (TOPDESS)”, funded through the Microgravity Application Program (N. 4000128640 ) by the European Space Agency .

Funding Information:
A. A. Alqahtani gratefully acknowledges a doctoral studentship from the Saudi Ministry for Education (King Khalid University). This work is carried out in the framework of project “TWO-PHASE PASSIVE THERMAL DEVICES FOR DELPLOYABLE SPACE SYSTEMS (TOPDESS)”, funded through the Microgravity Application Program (N. 4000128640) by the European Space Agency.

Keywords

  • Laser welding
  • Oscillating heat pipe
  • Polymer heat pipe
  • Pulsating heat pipe

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