Thermal performance of a selected heat pipe at different tilt angles

Abstract

An attempt is made to design, fabricate and test a copper heat pipe with 12 mm diameter, 300mm length and thickness of 1mm with a heat input of 7.29W. Experiments were conducted with and without working fluid for different inclinations to assess the thermal performance of heat pipe. The working fluids chosen for the study are acetone and distilled water and are compared. The thermal performance of the heat pipe was quantified in terms of thermal resistance and overall heat transfer coefficient by measuring temperature distribution across the heat pipe. The heat pipe was aligned for different inclinations and an optimum tilt angle was found experimentally, validated the same with simulation result obtained by computational fluid dynamics analysis and also with a reference paper. The copper heat pipe is found to be effective when acetone is used as working fluid. The optimum inclination angle of heat pipe for maximum rate of heat transfer is found to be 60° for both the working fluids tested. Even the cost of the heat pipe fabricated is very less compared to the commercial heat pipes available in the market.