Research on Axially Grooved Heat Pipe Heat Transfer Characteristics in Ground Tests

Axially grooved heat pipes (HP) are traditional and verified components of space thermal control systems. Their elaboration and study during the last 30 years give numerous information about inner heat transfer processes. Nevertheless, the different approaches, methods and assumptions used by researches do not allow to conduct reliable comparison of results and to apply the obtained results to anew developed heat pipes designs. Therefore full description of heat transfer research results and analysis of reasons affecting on them is still actual and important.

Ground tests of axially grooved heat pipes have specific features associated with influence of gravity on heat pipe performance and heat transfer, influence of attached accompanied elements as heaters, condensers, sensors, insulation. These factors can influence thereby that resulting characteristics as heat transfer coefficients, thermal resistance, heat productivity will be not evident enough and reliable.

Task of the current paper is to investigate the influence of announced factors both theoretically and by experiments. The typical modeling object is an ammonia aluminium grooved heat pipe by shell diameter 12 mm and 30 grooves.