Numerical Study on Single Turn Pulsating Heat Pipe with Additional Branch Configuration

Abstract

The simple wickless structure and strong heat transfer potential of pulsating heat pipes (PHP) have prompted widespread interest in transferring heat from electronic devices. This work proposes a novel single-turn PHP with convergent and divergent shaped additional branches (ABs) (C-PHP and D-PHP) in the evaporator section, which could increase latent heat transfer in the evaporator by minimizing the saturation temperature and improving the unidirectional flow and thermal performance of PHP. Numerical simulations were performed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques to understand the thermo-hydrodynamics and properties of the proposed novel PHPs. This study provides the outcomes of novel PHPs and a comparison with the performance of traditional PHP (T-PHP) without AB and straight AB PHP (S-PHP). The results demonstrated that the startup time of novel C-PHP and D-PHP were improved by 32.6% and 22.4%, respectively, compared to the T-PHP, “stopovers” and “local flow reversals” are minimized by the use of AB. The average flow velocity of novel C-PHP and D-PHP was improved by 16% when compared to T-PHP and 11.4% compared to S-PHP, the directional component in C-PHP is substantially stronger than S-PHP and D-PHP.