Dengying Liu

Study on Heat Transfer Enhancement of Oscillating-Flow Heat Pipe for Drying

The application of oscillating-flow heat pipe (OFHP) in drying is of great potential. In this article, two methods are proposed to enhance the heat transfer of OFHP: (1) pulse heating is adopted instead of conventional continuous heating; and (2) a tube with a nonuniform cross section is introduced. Experiments on the effects of these two methods have been studied in comparison with ordinary OFHP. Experimental results indicate that using the pulse heating and the nonuniform cross section channel can improve the oscillating process and the heat transport performance in the OFHP. The heat transfer rate of pulse heating OFHP is higher than that of the continuous by 15–38%, and the effective thermal conductivity is higher by 12–63% at the same heating power. The effective thermal conductivity and the heat transfer rate of the nonuniform cross section heat pipe are also higher than that of the uniform cross section heat pipe when the heating power is more than 100 W.

Experimental Study on the Heat Transfer Enhancement of Oscillating-Flow Heat Pipe by Acoustic Cavitation

Experimental investigations on the heat transfer characteristics of an oscillating-flow heat pipe with acoustic cavitation in comparison with the ordinary oscillating-flow heat pipe are given in this article. The experimental results showed that the heat transfer rate of an oscillating-flow heat pipe with an acoustic cavitation field imposed on the evaporator section was higher than that without a cavitation field by 8–24.5%. It has been proved that acoustic cavitation can enhance the heat transfer performance of an oscillating-flow heat pipe. However, for the case of acoustic cavitation applied on the condenser section, not all ultrasonic fields applied were effective, and the heat transfer rate increased from −39 to 77%. Further discussion on the experimental results is provided.

Experiments on Enhanced Heat Transfer of Self-Exciting Mode Oscillating-Flow Heat Pipe with Non-Uniform Structure

Experiments were performed on a closed loop self-exciting mode oscillating flow heat pipe (SEMOS HP) with uniform and non-uniform structures under the same tested conditions. The heat transfer characteristics are analyzed by comparing the temperature of wall of the heat pipe and output power when the heat input of the electric heating board and heating position are changed. The result shows that the heat transfer rate could be improved by using a non-uniform structure under low or middle heat input, and it gives the highest heat transfer performance when the non-uniform diameter section is at the bottom of the heat pipe and the heating source located below the non-uniform section.