Numerical analysis of high temperature potassium heat pipe under marine condition

Abstract

A heat pipe (HP) is a two-phase heat transmission device with very high effective thermal conductivity, extensively employed in multiple industrial fields. In the nuclear engineering area, numerous experimental and numerical studies are widely produced for its thermal behavior performance in high temperatures. In this paper, a HP that potassium as the working fluid with a capillary wick structure was taken into consideration under marine conditions through numerical simulations. The physical properties of potassium and the additional force method of rolling motion are utilized with user-defined functions (UDFs). This CFD model verified with available experimental results, is employed to investigate the influence of HP surface wall temperature distribution and thermal resistance by several parameters including inclination angle, filling ratio (FR), and rolling period. Besides, the charts of phase change and wall temperature distributions are visible with the help of CFD simulation under static and rolling condition. Therefore, the high temperature HP application of design and evaluation is provided as a reference in present work under marine condition.