Thermal performance of a wicked heat pipe with a finned condenser

Experiments were performed to evaluate the effect of fins at the condenser section of copper-water wicked heat pipes using three different fin spacings. The heat pipes were heated at one end and the condenser section was convectively cooled at different air velocities in a wind tunnel. An existing network model for wicked heat pipes was extended to incorporate the effects of fins at the condenser end of the heat pipe. The model takes into account the axial conduction along the wick and wall, and discretizes the component resistances into a number of elements along the axial and radial directions. The fins were simulated by specifying the appropriate boundary condition at each element where a fin is present. The simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results.