An Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Characteristics in Miniature Loop Heat Pipes With Rectangular Shaped Evaporator

Loop heat pipe (LHP) is a highly efficient cooling device. It has gained great attention in the electronics cooling industry due to its superior heat transport capability — that is, its ability to carry heat over long distances. For this article, a miniature flat loop heat pipe (MFLHP) with rectangular-shaped evaporator was developed. The LHP’s evaporator was combined with the compensation chamber. MFLHPs with different diameters and lengths for the connecting pipeline were selected for a series of experimental studies on their heat transfer characteristics. In these experiments, pure water was used as the working fluid. The studies showed that the heat transport capability of a MFLHP with 4 mm diameter was better than that a MFLHP with 3 mm diameter. At a low thermal resistance of 0.04°C /W (at 200W), an optimal length for the connecting pipeline for a particular MFLHP with 4 mm diameter was identified. Finally, a heat sink attached to a MFLHP was developed for cooling a graphics processing unit (GPU), the thermal design power (TDP) of which was 200 W. The results showed the GPU heat sink with MFLHP had good performance and satisfied GPU cooling requirements. Compared to the conventional heat pipe solutions, only one MFLHP was able to cope with high power dissipation, offering the potential to make a lighter heat sink.