Dynamic Characteristics of the Capillary Pumped Loop for Cooling the Tower-Type Computer

Abstract

Capillary pumped loop has been widely investigated for space thermal control devices. This cooling device with high reliability and thermal controllability is also considered to be suited to cool electronic devices like personal computers. Because the capillary pumped loop is good at absorbing heat from high heat flux region like micro-processors, transporting it and releasing it from the large surface for packaging. In this research, the experimental equipment of the capillary pumped loop was manufactured. The experimental apparatus consists of the evaporator, the condenser, the liquid line, the vapor line and the reservoir. In the experiments heat load is applied to the evaporator by a resistance heater. And heat is released from the condenser to the cooling water which is set to be a constant temperature by the refrigerator. The length and the diameter of the evaporator are 150mm and 27mm respectively and the capillary wick with equivalent diameter of 5μm is embedded in the evaporator. These specifications were designed to give 2500mm heat transport distance and to adapt the natural convection heat transfer to the ambient without a cooling fan. As is proposed in the recent study, the inside of the capillary wick was used as the reservoir to simplify the loop. In our previous study, the heat transport characteristics in steady states were investigated when the heat flux, the cooling water temperature and the evaporator height above the condenser changed, and then the effects of enclosed rate of the working fluid in the reservoir and the inclination angles of the evaporator on heat transport rate were investigated. The computer code was also developed to simulate the heat transport characteristics and evaluate the maximum heat transport rate of the tested capillary pump. In the next step, we focus on the dynamic characteristics. The heat loads of the micro-processors in the computers usually change according to the working conditions of the application software and vary hourly. Thus the active thermal regulation accompanied with the change of heat loads is the important factor for cooling devices in the computers. So in this study the heat transport characteristics in the dynamic conditions of the capillary pumped loop were investigated. In the experiment, the start-up and shut-down mode at a given heat load were tested at first. Then heat load were changed in incremental or decremental steps from 30 to 70W. All results show the good thermal controllability.