The primary focus of week 1 was to research the existing designs of a heat pipe, understand the mechanisms at which they operate, and come up with ideas to build an efficient low temperature heat pipe. The main purpose of the heat pipe is to transfer heat from one place to another. Research was conducted on low-temperature applications and the advantage and disadvantage of different designs. After analyzing the information and taking into account the time and budget restriction for this project, an initial design of the heat pipe was generated. The heat pipe will be made of copper tubing with mesh inside the tubes to serve as a wick. There will also be Aluminum heatsink fins at the condenser end to increase surface area for the spreading of heat to the surrounding. The main tasks include research, initial design, ordering of material, generation of CAD model, construction, testing, and optimization. The design and construction of the heat pipe are limited to a budget of $400 and a time period of ten weeks.
This week, prototype 3 and 4 were constructed and tested. As shown in the image below, the shorter one, prototype 4, has a length of 1 foot and the longer one, prototype 3, has a length of 2 feet. The effect of the length of the heat pipe on its efficiency is tested this week. Below is the tables and graphs of the testing done in lab this week. From the test results, it can be concluded that prototype 4 performed better than prototype 3. In 240 seconds, prototype 4 had a temperature increase of 12 degrees, while prototype 3 increased only 2 degrees. A possible reason is that the because the prototype 3 is longer in length, and so heat transfer takes longer. It is also possible due to heat loss along the length of the heat pipe.
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