Two Different Types of Axially-Grooved Heat Pipes and Thermal Performance Comparison

Heat pipes have been widely applied to the cooling of microelectronics chips at present. In this paper, to conduct a comparative study on heat pipe performance with different groove structures, two types of axially-grooved heat pipe were manufactured by spinning and secondary broaching respectively. The heat pipe A formed by spinning has homogeneous 55 U-shaped grooves on the inner wall. The grooves with depth of 220μm, width of 200μm and groove angle of 15° are smooth. While the inner wall of the heat pipe B fabricated by secondary broaching is scored and the grooves are heterogeneous. The comparison of heat transfer performance and start-up of two heat pipes are analyzed and investigated under different orientations and heat loads. Experimental results show that the heat pipe formed by spinning has a stronger level of heat transfer capabilities than heat pipe formed by secondary broaching. The maximum heat transfer rate for the heat pipe formed by spinning is almost 70Watts, while the one for the heat pipe fabricated by secondary broaching is only 20Watts. The minimum thermal resistance of the heat pipe A and B was 0.020°C/W and 0.068°C/W respectively. At positive inclination angles in gravity-assisted condition, the thermal performance of both two heat pipe have not obvious difference with at horizontal orientation. But at negative inclination angles in anti-gravity condition, the gravity will play an important role on grooved heat pipes.