Experimental study on a hydrogen pulsating heat pipe in different heating modes

Abstract

In practical applications, the heat load changes caused by various factors require the pulsating heat pipe (PHP) to have good heat transfer performance and temperature response characteristics in different heating modes. In order to understand the heat transfer performance of a hydrogen PHP in different heating modes, the temperature curves of the PHP in two heating modes (stepwise heating and sudden heating) are obtained experimentally. The experimental results show that for a given heat load, the differences of the quasi-steady-state temperatures and the effective thermal conductivities between two heating modes are negligible. It’s concluded that the stable heat transfer performance of the PHP is reproducible in the two different heating modes.