Experimental investigations of heat transfer mechanisms of a pulsating heat pipe

Experimental work was carried out to clarify the heat transfer mechanism of a pulsating heat pipe (PHP). A micro pulsating heat pipe (MPHP) with five turns was fabricated by engraving an interconnected micro-channel on a 1.1 mm thick transparent glass wafer. The engraved glass wafer and a 500 gm thick silicon wafer were anodically bonded to form a closed-loop MPHP. Ethanol was charged into the MPHP as the working fluid. The MPHP was vertically oriented with a bottom-heating mode. Using infrared (IR) thermometry, the distributions of temperature and heat flux were measured at the fluid-wall interface for the first time over the entire MPHP with high spatial and temporal resolution. High-speed flow visualization, which was synchronized to heat transfer measurements, was utilized to identify the local flow patterns corresponding to the local temperature and heat flux. The heat transfer at the fluid silicon interface in the channels could be divided into the two parts: sensible heat transfer and latent heat transfer, and quantitative analysis of the data clarified the contributions of sensible/latent heat transfer to overall heat transfer. The overall contribution of latent heat transfer was estimated to be between 66% and 74%. Latent heat transfer not only induces the oscillating flow but also contributes significantly to overall heat transfer, whereas sensible heat transfer is a byproduct of the oscillating flow.