Nagesh Dharavath
Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras
Mani Annamalai
Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Laboratory, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai-36, India
Experimental investigations on a cylindrical heat pipe (CHP)
with copper metallic foam wick structure were studied. Copper
metallic foams fabricated by lost carbonate sintering process
are compressed to different thickness to obtain maximum
capillary rise and were characterized by using Scanning
Electron Microscope (SEM) was used as wick structure. Effect
of heat input, hot water flow rate, cooling water flow rate and
cooling water temperature on the thermal response of the CHP
is presented. Capillary rise test is performed on the
compressed foams. It is observed that the compressed foam of
thickness 1mm is giving maximum capillary rise of 80 mm,
compared to all the samples prepared. Increasing the heat input
improved the performance of heat pipe, due to increased rate
of evaporation at evaporator section. It was found that
increasing the cold water temperature decreased the capillary
limit of heat pipe, due to decrease in the amount of liquid
condensed at the condenser section. The measured capillary
limit of heat pipe is 55W corresponding to condenser
temperature of 15°C.