Analysis of thermal control performance of variable conductance heat pipe with axial grooves

The present study has been conducted to analytically investigate the thermal control performance of Variable Conductance Heat Pipe (VCHP) with axial grooves. The condenser port of the VCHP is occupied by a inert gas in which the concentration of gas is varied with the operation temperature and the heat transport capacity is thus varied with the operating temperature due to the variation of inert gas concentration. In this study, numerical evaluation for the thermal control of the VCHP with axial grooves is made from the 1st order diffusion model that considers the diffusive expansion of inert gas by concentration gradient. Ammonia is used as a working fluid and Nitrogen as a control gas in the Aluminum tube. As a result, the thermal performance of VCHP based on diffusion model has been compared with that of VCHP from flat front model