Study of Thermal Performance of Closed Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

Abstract: Pulsating heat pipe is a heat transfer device which works on two principles that is phase transition and thermal conductivity which transfer heat effectively at different temperatures. Different factors affect the thermal performance of pulsating heat pipe. So, various researchers tried to enhance thermal conductivity by changing parameters such as working fluids, filling ratio, etc. Analysis of heat transfer characteristics of closed loop pulsating heat pipe (CLPHP) is to be carried out by using Computational Fluid Dynamics. The CLPHP is to be modelled on ANSYS Workbench, the flow of CLPHP is to be observed under specific boundary conditions by using ANSYS Fluent software. Acetone and Water are taken as the working fluid with 70% filling ratio at ambient temperature 30° C and the heat flux of 200 W is supplied at evaporator. Also, the analysis has been done to know the behaviour of PHPs under varying supply of heat flux at evaporator (inlet), the output heat flux is obtained at condenser (outlet) and find out how the heat flux is varying at different temperatures. CFD results shows the heat transfer characteristics observing the performance of CLPHP is a numerical manner. The obtained CFD results are compared with the experimental. The outputs of the simulations are plotted in graphs and outlines. Keywords: Closed Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe, CFD, Heat Transfer, ANSYS.