Manufacture and Performance Simulation of a Visible Miniature Loop Heat Pipe

This paper initiates mechanical machining technique, material processing and thermal science to realize a relative low-cost visual miniature loop heat pipe (mLHP) and simulates the stress distribution and heat transfer characteristics of this mLHP using the softwares MSC-NASTRAN and SINDA/FLUINT respectively. mLHP body is made of stainless steel except the condenser and cooling water jacket which are made of acrylic glass in order to make visualization research inside the mLHP. The sintering wick with good capillary force and enough strength is obtained using the cold pressing sintering method. Both the mechanical stress and the thermal analysis indicate that this new loop heat pipe may meet the design requirements and work well for a heat input up to 40W.