Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

A Model Of Heat And Mass Transfer In An Idealized Micro Heat Pipe, Jin Zhang

LSU Master's Theses

Micro heat pipes have been used to cool computer chips, but their heat transfer coefficients are low compared with that of conventional heat pipes. To understand this deficiency, an idealized micro heat pipe is proposed that has simplified interfacial geometry but retains the essential physics. It is a long and narrow cavity of rectangular cross section with the bottom made of a wetting material and the top a non-wetting material. A wetting liquid fills the bottom half of the cavity, and its vapor fills the rest. This configuration ensures that the liquid-vapor interface is pinned at the contact line. Since …