The Effect of Thickness and Permeability of Wick Structure on L-Shape Heat Pipe Performance Using Different Working Fluids

Abstract

This paper presents a two-dimensional FEM simulation of working fluid behavior inside L-shape heat pipe to predict wall temperature and liquid pressure under natural and forced convection modes by using ANSYS-FLOTRAN. This work aimed to numerically study the effect of thickness and permeability of wick structure using different working fluids on L-shape heat pipe performance, where water and methanol were used as working fluids. The heat inputs for natural and forced convection modes comprised 20 W and 35 W respectively whereas the heat pipe wick thicknesses were taken as 0.5 mm and 0.75 mm. The results showed that at forced convection the use of water as working fluid with 0.5 mm sintered copper wick recorded the smallest temperature difference (9.8 °C) while methanol with 0.75 mm screen mesh wick recorded the largest temperature difference (28.27 °C).