Thermal responses of heat pipes with different wick structures under variable centrifugal accelerations

The thermal response of heat pipes is commonly investigated under different inclinations in static state by increasing the heat load at the evaporator zone until the pipes dry out. In practical applications, heat pipes are utilized not only in static state but also in dynamic state. In this work, a centrifugal apparatus is developed to serve as experimental equipment, to subject the heat pipe samples to centrifugal accelerations that range from 1 g to 2 g. Heat pipe samples are fabricated with four types of wicks, namely, grooved (G), sintered (S), sintered-grooved composite (SG), and grooved with half sintered length (SGH). Thermal responses of these samples are investigated on the apparatus. Results show that the heat pipes with SG wicks demonstrate the best thermal behavior among the samples but remain noticeably affected by enhanced centrifugal acceleration. By contrast, the G wick heat pipes contribute the least to operation under centrifugal acceleration.