How are heat pipes used in the real world?
Heat pipes were first developed for use by Los Alamos National Laboratory to supply heat to and remove waste heat from energy conversion systems. Today, heat pipes are used in a variety of applications from space to handheld devices that fit in your pocket.
How are heat pipes used for thermal management?
Transform heat from a high heat flux at the evaporator to a lower heat flux at the condenser, making it easier to remove overall heat with conventional methods such as liquid or air cooling. Heat fluxes of up to 1,000 W/cm 2 can be transformed with custom vapor chambers. Provide an isothermal surface.
What kind of heat transfer device is a heat pipe?
Heat pipe. A heat pipe is a heat-transfer device that combines the principles of both thermal conductivity and phase transition to effectively transfer heat between two solid interfaces.
What kind of material is a heat pipe made of?
A typical heat pipe consists of a sealed pipe or tube made of a material that is compatible with the working fluid such as copper for water heat pipes, or aluminum for ammonia heat pipes.
When do you need to use a heat pipe?
Heat pipes can transfer lots of energy from a hot side to a cold side and is useful when you need to cool something where having a fan near the hot part isn’t feasible for some reason. Unlike active cooling, a heat pipe doesn’t require any external power or pumps, either. [James Biggar] builds his own heat pipes using copper tubing.
Which is the most common type of heat pipe?
In addition, discussion is focused on the most ubiquitous type of heat pipe, i.e. copper tube with sintered copper wick using water as the working fluid.
What kind of spreader does a heat pipe use?
Note that both these examples use a solid copper spreader that attaches to the heat source, then heat moves to the heat pipes (indirect contact).
Which is the best way to mating heat pipes?
The more cost effective method of mating heat pipes to a heat source is usually through a base plate. This can be done with either an aluminum or copper plate (shown on left).
