Numerical simulation of heat pipe and study of geometric parameters and working fluid on its thermal performance for aerospace applications

One of the critical challenges in the satellite is thermal management of the electronic unit and preventing the formation of hotspots, which requires proper heat transfer for structures used in spacecraft. One way to increase heat conduction is to use heat pipes in these structures. Heat pipes are passive heat control methods that can be used in aerospace applications due to their reliability, cost and power consumption, lifetime, and high thermal conductivity. The main goal of this study is to apply a heat pipe in thermal management of the satellite. We use a 3D cylindrical numerical model of the wicked heat pipe for comprising with experimental data. Heat pipe simulation is performed using the multi-phase volume of the fluid model (VOF) method, and user-defined function in the numerical model in Fluent software. We use transient mode for solving equations. The simulations results show that after 120 s the heat pipe operation is stabled. The results confirm reducing the porosity, the thermal resistance in the heat pipe increases, and the heat transfer performance decreases. The results also show that the methanol has the lowest thermal resistance among other coolants.