Experimental study on novel pulsating heat pipe radiator for horizontal CPU cooling under different wind speeds

Abstract

Herein, a horizontal CPU cooler with a pulsating heat pipe for cooling desktop computer was developed. In the experiment, an electric heating block was used to heat a copper plate to simulate the heating process of CPU. The cooling system consists of a cooling fan and a pulsating heat pipe cooler. The influence of cooling wind speed and heat load on heat transfer performance, start-up performance, and temperature uniformity of the pulsating heat pipe cooler was analyzed by controlling variable method. The wind speed was set to be 0 m/s, 0.1 m/s, 0.3 m/s, 0.5 m/s, and 0.7 m/s, respectively. The contour plots were used to analyze the uniformity of temperature distribution due to cooler. The results show that the start-up of the pulsating heat pipe led to a decrease in temperature of CPU. As the cooling wind speed increased, the start-up time of the pulsating heat pipe dropped, the start-up temperature dropped, and its stability was also improved. The operation at different cooling wind speeds also changed the start-up mode of the pulsating heat pipe. The start-up performance was best at cooling wind speed of 0.3 m/s. The contour plot for temperature showed that the temperature distribution of the pulsating heat pipe cooler became more uniform with increased cooling wind speeds. There was excellent temperature uniformity at the cooling wind speeds of 0.3 m/s and 0.7 m/s. When the cooling wind speed was 0.7 m/s, the minimum average thermal resistance was 0.51 K/W.