Abstract:
This paper describes a computational procedure to solve the constant temperature at which evaporation and condensation of the working fluid takes place inside a heat pipe. The numerical method used is a cell centered finite volume method. The temperature of the heat pipe is found to be more controlled by the heat transfer coefficient at the condenser. At the adiabatic section it was found that the effective liquid film heat transfer coefficient and the thick - ness of the wall has profound influence on the spreading of the heat. It was also found that by increasing the thickness of the wall, high heat spread can be acheived. Studies were also conducted to analyse the effect of thermal conductivity of the heat pipe material on its heat transfer characteris-tics.