Thermal Analysis of a Cylindrical Heat Pipe in a Magnetic Field

Heat pipes (HPs) are used in temperature profile flattening and cooling process of the devices involved in thermal issues. Thermal performance of a HP can be considered as a function of external and internal parameters. This research develops a numerical model with governing equations to analyze likely effects of a magnetic field on the thermal operation of a specific cylindrical HP. In this model, we consider conservation of mass, momentum and energy, in addition to the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations. We use the finite element method (FEM) to solve the system of stated equations. To demonstrate the validity of numerical results, we compare our numerical results with the results of other works in the absence of magnetic field. Additionally, we develop an experimental setup and show that our numerical and experimental results are in good agreement. Our results show that increasing the magnetic flux density from 0 to 0.2 Tesla results in three important improvements on the HP operation: (a) 47% reduction of the temperature difference, (b) reduction of the average temperature and operation pressure, and (c) increasing the uniformity of temperature distribution.