In principle of LHP operation it is assumed that the evaporation of working fluid takes place at the interface of heating wall and the primary wick, admitting the complete saturation of porous wick with the liquid phase.
But it has been found from ...
In principle of LHP operation it is assumed that the evaporation of working fluid takes place at the interface of heating wall and the primary wick, admitting the complete saturation of porous wick with the liquid phase.
But it has been found from lots of experimental investigations that the line of vapor-liquid meniscus draws back toward the center of the wick with an increasing heat load, showing the existence of a dried zone. The appearance of dried zone changes the flow mechanism through the wick, resulting in increasing the pressure drop over the wick. This is the origin of wick dry limitation for LHPs. The quantity of wick dry limitation seems to lie on the depth of dried zone but in reality it is a complicate matter to predict the vapor front line as a function of wick geometry parameters, fluid properties and rates of heat supply.
In this study wick limitation was measured from experiments using the given LHP model developed for the present study and the data were put to evaluate the existing depth of dried zone as a function of heat rates.