Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Liquid-Vapor Distributions In Evacuated Small Diameter Channels For Improved Accuracy Of Initial Conditions In Modeling Of Oscillating Heat Pipes, Travis Mayberry

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

Oscillating heat pipes, also known as pulsating heat pipes, are increasingly becoming a preferred high-performance thermal ground plane in a variety of heat spreading applications due to a number of advantages over traditional copper-water wicked heat pipes, including their lighter weight, thinner profiles, simpler fabrication, and greater variety of material and working fluid options. A major barrier to even wider adoption, however, is the lack of comprehensive analytical models to simulate their performance. A key input to first principles models simulating the fundamental physics of the devices is the initial condition of liquid and vapor segment lengths and their distribution …

Geometrically Complex Planar Heat Exchangers, Derli Dias Do Amaral Junior, Jose Lage

Mechanical Engineering Research Theses and Dissertations

In this study, geometrically complex planar heat exchangers, designed in line with the Constructal Law and operating at steady-state, are investigated numerically. The work is divided into two parts, one focusing on diffusion heat transfer in a rectangular plane and another on conjugate diffusion-convection heat transfer in a circular plane heat exchanger.

In the first part, a heat generating rectangular solid volume made of a low conductivity material is cooled through a small, isothermal side-section of the domain. The diffusion cooling process is improved by distributing within the heat generating material a fixed amount of a high conductivity material. The …