Experimental investigation on the start-up performance of a novel flat loop heat pipe with dual evaporators

Abstract

Thermal management for multiple heat sources has been becoming increasingly important, especially under high heat flux conditions. As a passive heat transfer device, loop heat pipes (LHP) with multiple evaporators does not consume extra energy, demonstrating a great potential in thermal management. This paper proposed a flat plate LHP with dual evaporators for the first time. Two flat plate evaporators were adopted, and both of them had their own porous wick, compensation chamber (CC) and vapor line. The condensed liquid converged, then moved along the main liquid line. The CC of two evaporators was joined by a tube, which can ensure the sharing of the returning liquid. To verify the performance of novel flat plate LHP, the start-up test was investigated under different heat load arrangements, involving only a single evaporate was applied heat load, two evaporators were applied with the equal or unequal heat load. Meanwhile, the operation stability was determined by testing the performance with the successionally variable heat load. This system has been shown to operate successfully at heating source temperature below 100 °C with heat load ranging from 10 W–10 W to 130 W–130 W (corresponding to the maximum heat flux of 13.52 W/cm2).