Evaporative Heat Transfer at the Evaporator Section of a Deep-Grooved Heat Pipe

摘要

Evaporative heat and mass transfer phenomena is investigated in the vicinity of the liquid meniscus edge in the evaporator of a deep-grooved heat pipe theoretically and experimentally. A theoretical model for simulating the phenomena is proposed, which consists of "macro" and "micro" regions. The former represents a most part of the liquid meniscus region where conventional heat conduction, convection and vaporization of the liquid will take place, while the latter is a confined narrow region comacted to the solid wall where the heat transfer is affected by inter-molecular forces or disjoining pressure to form a thin nonevaporative liquid film on the solid wall, extended from the meniscusedge. An optical measurement was also conducted to confirm the existence of the thin liquid film in the order of several tens nanometers (ns) in the vicinity of the meniscus edge.