The Start-Up Performance of Pulsating Heat Pipe With Communicating Pipe at Different Inclination Angles

Abstract

The pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is a passive cooling device, which has the advantages of simple structure, high heat transfer performance and low production cost. The complex vapor-liquid phase change occurs in the in the initial stage of PHP. In this work, we explore the start-up performance of PHP at different inclination angles and the experiment shows that start-up performance is respectively different when the angles are 0°, 45°, 90°, 135° and 180°. Since the gravitational auxiliary function, the working fluid in the communicating pipe which takes longer time to vaporize change phase earlier than that in PHP’s loop when the angles are 0° and 45°. Nevertheless, when the angle is 90°, the phase change of working fluid in communicating pipe and in the loop occurs at the same time. Meanwhile, the oscillating mode affects the stability of the starting and heat transfer performance of the PHP.