Capillary boosting for enhanced heat pipe performance through bifurcation of grooves: Numerical assessment and experimental validation

In this study, an enhanced heat pipe performance for grooved heat pipes has been demonstrated through capillary boosting with the introduction of the bifurcation of grooves. Wider grooves regularly branch to narrower grooves such that the total cross-sectional liquid flow area remains approximately the same. Following the computational framework drawn by a recently developed heat pipe analysis toolbox (H-PAT), we develop a numerical model for the heat pipes with tree-like groove architecture. Then we utilize the model to design a flat-grooved heat pipe with one step groove bifurcation at the evaporator. To verify our numerical findings, two heat pipes with and without groove bifurcation are manufactured and experimented under the same conditions. Experimental results show that the numerical model can predict the thermal performance quite accurately. The results reveal that groove bifurcation can be a viable option for a better thermal performance than that of heat pipes with standard grooved heat pipes with straight grooves which leads to at least 25% higher maximum heat transport capacity. The effect of number of branching on the temperature flattening across the heat pipe is also demonstrated for different evaporator lengths.