CFD and Volume Fraction Analysis of Closed Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe(CLPHP)

Abstract

The Closed loop pulsating heat pipes (CLPHPs) are complex heat transfer devices having a strong thermo hydrodynamic coupling governing the thermal performance. Attempts are made to design, fabricate and test a closed loop pulsating heat pipe. In this experiment three different configurations of copper capillary tubes having internal diameters the total length and diameter of the channel is 540 mm and 1.95 mm respectively; and the pipe is made of copper. In this work, acetone-acetone vapor is taken as the working fluid for analysis. The experiments are conducted on vertical orientations for different heat loads as working fluids for fill ratio viz. 60%, the temperature distribution across the heat pipe was measured and recorded using thermocouples. The performance parameters such as temperature difference between evaporator and condenser, thermal resistance and the overall heat transfer coefficient are evaluated. The experimental results demonstrate the heat transfer characteristics, lower thermal resistance and higher heat transfer coefficient of PHP are found to be better at a fill ratio of 60% for various heat input and also the thermal performance of set up of pulsating heat pipe gives better result over the uniform diameter CLPHP the CFD analysis is done with the help of Ansys15.0 software.