International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hmt

An experiment and three-dimensional numerical simulation of

pulsating heat pipes
Duy-Tan Vo, Hyoung-Tak Kim, Junghyuk Ko, Kwang-Hyun Bang∗
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Maritime and Ocean University, 727 Taejongro, Yeongdogu, Busan 49112, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An experimental and analytical study of pulsating heat pipe (PHP) has been carried out in order to de-
Received 18 August 2019 velop a more reliable numerical simulation model. The test PHP was made of transparent Pyrex tubes
Revised 11 December 2019
with the inner diameter of 1.85mm and a total of sixteen tubes formed eight turns of PHP. Both heat-
Accepted 4 January 2020
ing and cooling were provided by water jackets in which inlet and outlet temperatures were precisely
Available online 18 January 2020
measured for estimating heat transfer rate. The working fluid was R123. Visualization using a high-speed
Keywords: camera showed various flow patterns as well as the fluid motions. The wall temperature measured at
Pulsating heat pipe various locations revealed its relation to the fluid motion and the direction of circulation. The circulation
Two-phase flow motion was dominant in most tests. The heat transfer rate was measured and the difference for filling
CFD ratio of 50 and 60% was little. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics modeling has been
Fluent developed for pulsating heat pipe using ANSYS Fluent. The VOF model with variable density and vapor
pressure relation successfully simulated the circulating motions of PHP. The predicted wall temperatures
showed the same indication of mode of flow motion and the flow direction as observed in the experi-
ment. The predicted heat transfer rates agreed well with the experimental data within 5%. The success
of the simulation of the experiment implies that the realizable k−ε turbulence model is appropriate to
PHP simulation and the use of variable density for liquid and vapor and the vapor pressure equation is
crucial.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction cillatory pattern. A construction of multiple turns out of a long,

Heat pipe is, in general, a device through which heat transfers
better with the help of latent heat of vaporization in such that the
working fluid charged inside the device evaporates in the heating
section and the vapor moves to the cooling section and it con-
denses. In conventional heat pipes, the condensed liquid returns
to the heating section with the help of capillary force enhanced
with so-called wicks fabricated on the inside surface of heat pipe.
Therefore, the wick design governs the rate of returning conden-
sate flow and thus this limits the heat transfer performance of the
conventional heat pipes.
Another type of heat pipes is an oscillating heat pipe, or some-
times called a Pulsating Heat Pipe (PHP). It has no wick, but plain
inner surface. The pulsating heat pipe is an efficient heat trans-
port device that employs evaporation of charged working fluid at
the heat source and condensation at the heat sink of the heat pipe.
The pressure difference between the evaporation and condensation
parts acts to move the working fluid inside the heat pipe in an os-
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: khbang@kmou.ac.kr (K.-H. Bang).
capillary-size tube can amplify this pressure difference. While the
heat transport performance of the conventional heat pipe is lim-
ited mainly by the capillary force in narrow flow area through
wicks, in the PHP, there is always a driving force of pressure dif-
ference through relatively large flow area of the whole tube cross
section by different saturation pressures corresponding to heating
and cooling temperature as long as the heating part and the cool-
ing part are kept at different temperature. Despite the advantages
of simple, higher thermal performance and economical construc-
tion of a pulsating heat pipe, a practical application to cooling of
electronic packages has been scarce. This is mainly because the
pulsating action may not sustain in some poor designs or in ab-
normal conditions. The pulsating action can slow down or seize
sometimes.
With the rapid development of semiconductor technology, the
operating power of micro-electro processors such as in smart-
phones and mobile devices has continued to increase higher and
higher. This trend has brought a high demand of an efficient heat
dissipation technology that must prevent hot spots. The pulsating
heat pipe with high performance is a promising heat transfer de-
vice for such a demand.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2020.119317
0017-9310/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317
Nomenclatures
cp specific heat, J/kg K
k thermal conductivity, W/mK
m˙ mass flow rate, kg/s
p pressure, Pa
q heat flux, W/m2
T temparature, K
v velocity, m/s
Greek symbols
α void fraction
μ viscosity, Ns/m2
ρ density, kg/m3
Subscript
in inlet
l liquid
out outlet
rad thermal radiation
sat saturation
v vapor
In the past several decades, the experimental as well as theoret-
ical studies on the pulsating heat pipe have been abundant since
Akachi [1] patented it in 1990. The physical parameters that in-
fluence the operation and the performance of the pulsating heat
pipes are known to be tube diameter, thermal conditions (i.e., tem-
perature range), type of working fluid, charging ratio, number of
channels, and the arrangement (or inclination against gravity di-
rection). Clear understanding and quantitative evaluation of the ef-
fect of these parameters on the PHP performance are crucial to the
optimum design of the PHP for various applications.
Groll and his co-workers [2–4] considered a wide range of fac-
tors that affect the operating mechanism of PHP. Their work has
vastly contributed to the knowledge of operational mechanism of
PHP. Their review papers [5, 6] summarized the effects of the ma-
jor parameters. To understand the flow characteristics of PHP, the
flow visualization of PHP has been conducted by many researchers
[7–9]. The early observation of oscillating and circulating motions
were presented by Tong et al. [7]. Khandekar and Groll [8] ob-
served the relationship between the magnitude of supplied heat
and the pattern of motion. They reported that the flow motion
changed from oscillating motion to circulating motion with the in-
creasing of heat supply. The study of Xue and Qu [9] noted that
the thermo-hydrodynamic characteristics and thermal performance
have a direct relationship with the distribution of vapor bubbles
and liquid slugs. Their investigations have brought a good progress
in understanding PHP operational physics, although the cause of
circulation and oscillation motions was yet unrevealed.
Jang et al. [10] recently reported an experimental result of PHP
in which they investigated the effect of nonuniform heating that
they considered as the practical operating condition compared to a
uniform heating. They charged HFE-7100 fluid in 1.8 mm-diameter
tube PHP of eight turns. They observed different mode of flow di-
rection for various heat inputs. Oscillation motion was dominant
at low heat input and the motion changed to circulation pattern
at higher heat input. As the heat input increased further, dryout
occurred.
Several theoretical and numerical studies have been performed
to understand the heat transfer mechanism of PHP. Shafii et al.
[11] developed one-dimensional modeling to predict thermal be-
havior and heat transfer of PHP. Following the Shafii’s model, many
mathematical models have been proposed to analyze the com-
plicated behavior of PHP motion [12–15]. In particula, Bae et al.
[15] investigated the effect of film dynamics on fluid motion and
thermal performance of PHP. Their results showed a good pre-
diction of thermal performance in comparison with experimental
data, not only for a vertical PHP but also for horizontal and in-
clined PHP with various different parameters.
In the computational fluid dynamics approach to the simula-
tion of PHP, Lin et al. [16] presented a two-dimensional simula-
tion based on volume of fluid (VOF) and mixture model. Their
study showed that the mixture model is more suitable for the two-
phase flow simulation of PHP. Pouryoussefi and Zhang [17] also
performed a two-dimensional simulation and reported the chaotic
flow behavior in a multi-turn closed PHP. The formation of per-
fect vapor, liquid plugs, and the liquid film were observed in their
study. Liu and Chen [18] simulated a flat-plate oscillating heat pipe
(FP-OHP) using a three-dimensional model. They pointed out that
the generation and characteristic of vapor slugs and liquid plugs
come from the self-growth and coalescence of dispersed bubbles.
Daimaru et al. [19] reported numerical simulation and experiment
in an application of PHP to on-orbit systems.
Although there have been many experimental and numerical
work to investigate the operational mechanism and the thermal
performance of PHPs, only a few numerical work have been car-
ried out on predicting performance of PHP and yet successful sim-
ulation of actual pulsating actions seems very scarce. To develop a
simulation model of PHP with better performance, it seems nec-
essary to further investigate the flow patterns of working fluid in
the evaporator and condenser sections. In the present study [20], a
PHP was made of transparent Pyrex tubes for visualization of flow
regimes. Both heating and cooling were provided by water jackets
in which inlet and outlet temperatures were precisely measured
and these were used to calculate heat transfer rates. The flow mo-
tion was recorded using a high-speed camera. A three-dimensional
numerical simulation model has been developed using ANSYS Flu-
ent.
2. Experiment
2.1. Experimental apparatus
The test facility consists mainly of a heat pipe as the test sec-
tion, data acquisition system, flowmeters, two circulating water
baths. Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of experimental apparatus.
Two circulating baths (JEIO TECH, RW-0525) were used to supply
hot and cold water into heating and cooling water jackets. The hot
and cold water were normally maintained at 80 °C and 25 °C, re-
spectively. The water flow rate was variable but was normally 1
LPM and it was measured using a rotameter-type flowmeter. After
the evacuating and charging process, the circulating baths flow the
water through the chambers.
The pulsating heat pipe was constructed using transparent
Pyrex tubes of 3.02 mm of the outer diameter and 1.85 mm of in-
ner diameter. Sixteen tubes were equally spaced by 26.2 mm apart
and these make eight turns as shown in Fig. 2. The PHP was de-
signed to operate in either closed or open type by opening or clos-
ing the connecting tube between the two ends. The major dimen-
sions of the PHP are also found in Fig. 6 in the simulation part. The
test section consists of four parts: adiabatic-1, adiabatic-2, heating,
and cooling section as indicated in Fig. 6. Tests were conducted for
vertical orientation with bottom heating. For working fluid, R123
was chosen based on the performance of various fluids reported
in the prior work [3, 21]. The fluid motions were recorded using a
high-speed camera (FASTCAM SA4).
Twelve thermocouples were attached to the wall of adiabatic-
1 section as shown in Fig. 2(a). The inlet temperature of water
jacket was measured with one thermocouple but the outlet tem-
perature was measured with three thermocouples to get an aver-
 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317 3

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental apparatus.

Table 1 Table 2
Experimental parameters. Slug velocity calculation.

Parameter Value From frame To frame From time To time t (s) Velocity (m/s)

Tube inner diameter 1.85 mm 40 53 0.808 0.834 0.026 0.46

Number of tubes 16 (8 turns) 53 61 0.834 0.850 0.016 0.75
Orientation Vertical (bottom heating) 61 68 0.850 0.864 0.014 0.86
Water temperature: 68 74 0.864 0.876 0.012 1.0
- Heating 80 °C 74 79 0.876 0.886 0.010 1.2
- Cooling 25 o C
Working fluid R123
Filling ratio (FR) 50–60%
Water flow rate 1 LPM 2.2.1. Flow pattern visualization
When a boiling process takes place, a variety of configurations
known as flow patterns were observed. The particular flow pattern
depends on the condition of pressure, flow velocity, heat flux, char-
aged value. Temperature data were monitored and recorded by a
acteristics of fluid, and channel geometry. Fig. 3(a) and (b) shows
LabVIEW-based data acquisition system (National instruments, Ni
the flow pattern of cooling and heating section. Flow patterns in
SCX1 10 0 0). The thermal performance of the PHP was evaluated
the heating and cooling sections are generally different probably
by measuring heat transfer rate, which was calculated based on the
because of difference in heat transfer process of boiling and con-
heat balance equation given below using the inlet and outlet tem-
densation. It can be seen that the major flow patterns in the heat-
peratures of heating and cooling jackets and the water flow rate.
ing section are annular, semi-annular, slug, and churn flow. In the
cooling section, the major flow patterns are bubbly and annular
q = m˙ × C p × |(Tout − Tin )| (1) flow. In the cooling section where the condensation occurs, the
pressure difference between liquid slug and vapor plug is small.
The system was designed with two 3-way valves installed on
Therefore, the velocity of liquid slug and vapor plug is slow. The
the adiabatic 2 section for vacuuming the PHP and charging the
flow pattern representing this slow motion is slug slow. In the
working fluid. Before charging R123, the PHP was evacuated to
heating section, along the length of tube, the flow pattern is bub-
pressure less than 0.3 kPa by using the vacuum pump. Then, the
bly, slug, or annular flow.
working fluid was charged into the evacuated PHP with the pre-
Flow visualizations were also used in estimating the velocity of
weighted amount of liquid for the desired filling ratio (FR). The
fluid flow to determine whether the flow is laminar or turbulent.
experimental parameters are summarized in Table 1.
Fig. 4 shows the flow motion of slug flow in a bend of the heating
section. The motion of slug flow from frame 40 to 79 of test 16 was
2.2. Experimental results analyzed. In this figure, the slug flow moves upward. The velocity
of slug flow was calculated and presented in Table 2. The average
A set of preliminary tests were conducted to observe the per- velocity of fluid flow fluctuates in the range from 0.8 to 2 m/s. The
formance of the test PHP and to check the energy balance between Reynolds number calculated for liquid at this velocity range lies in
the heating and cooling sections. Seven tests were chosen here to the range from 6600 to 16,0 0 0, implying that the flow is turbulent.
discuss on the flow pattern and heat transfer rate. These tests were
divided into two groups based on filling ratio. Group A of 60% of 2.2.2. Heat transfer rate
filling ratio includes test no. 16, 17, 18 and 22 and group B of 50% The average heat transfer rate was calculated using Eq. (1) us-
of filling ratio includes test no. 19, 20 and 21. ing the temperature data when the system reached steady state in
4 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317

Table 3
Summary of test results.

Group Test no. Filling ratio (%) Heat transfer rate (W) Flow regime State

A 16 60 180.7 Oscillating flow Stable

17 189.6 Circulating flow Stable
18 169.0 Circulating flow Reverse observed
22 173.3 Oscillating flow Stable
B 19 50 181.6 Circulating flow Stable
20 186.1 Circulating flow Stable
21 171.4 Circulating flow Stable

Table 4 experiment and is given in Table 2. But the initial distribution pat-
Measurement uncertainty of heat transfer
tern of liquid and vapor is random and it changes also as the test
rate.
is performed repeatedly even with the same charged fluid. The cir-
Variable Uncertainty culating motion is normally observed when the initial distribution
Mass flow rate ± 2% of the slugs and plugs is random and scattered in small size inside
Temperature difference ± 5% the pipe. Meanwhile, the oscillating motion normally occurs when
Heat transfer rate ± 5.4% the liquid is distributed as long slug columns. Such an effect of ini-
tial fluid distribution on flow behavior has been also reported by
Tong et al. [7] and Daimaru et al. [19].

about one hour. The test results are summarized in Table 3. The
oscillation motion was observed in test 16 and 22. The rest of the
tests showed circular motion. The difference in heat transfer rate
between two motions is small as seen in Table 3. The average heat
transfer rate of group A is 181.2 W except test 18 because of rever-
sal of motion which may cause the reduction of heat transfer. The
average heat transfer rate of group B is 179.7 W. The uncertainty
in the measurement of heat transfer rate was ± 5.4% as given in
Table 4.
The difference on the characteristics of fluid motion could be
simply described with the direction of flow: in the case of circu-
lating motion, the fluid normally travels in one direction, and in
the case of oscillating motion, the fluid oscillates around a certain
length. Circulating and oscillating motions could be identified by
observing the wall temperature of two adjacent tubes.
The main parameters resulting in different motion types are the
filling ratio and the initial distribution pattern of the liquid and va-
por throughout the heat pipe. The filling ratio is controlled in the
2.2.3. Wall temperature
Fig. 5 illustrates the variation of wall temperatures in test 16,
18 and 19 for one hour after the steady-state was reached. Tests
16 and 19 represent for oscillating and circulating motions, respec-
tively. The line numbers correspond to the location of twelve ther-
mocouples as shown in Fig. 6. The odd-numbered and the even-
numbered points are indicated by blue and red color respectively
to express the characteristic of motion. As seen in the figure, in
the case of oscillating motion, the temperature fluctuate around
the average temperature of the heating and cooling water temper-
atures (about 56 ˚C). However, in the case of circulating motion,
the odd-numbered and the even-numbered temperatures fluctuate
at different level. Typically, in test 19, the odd-numbered temper-
ature fluctuates around 51 ˚C and the even-numbered temperature
fluctuates around 60 ˚C. The reason for this difference between two
motions is the characteristic of fluid motion.

Fig. 3. Flow pattern of fluid flow at (a) heating section and (b) cooling section
 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317
In the circulating case, the fluid travels in one direction. Thus,
the temperature at downstream points of the heating section is
higher and the temperature at downstream points of the cooling
section is lower. Otherwise, in the case of oscillation motion, the
fluid moves back and forth over a certain length. Therefore, the
temperature fluctuates in the range of average temperature. It also
implies that the direction of motion can be determined by observ-
ing the temperature at the odd and even-numbered points. For ex-
ample, in test 19, the temperature at the even-numbered points
were higher than that of odd-numbered points. This indicates that
the circulation direction of test 19 is counterclockwise.
In test 18 of Fig. 5, the reversed direction of motion was ob-
served repeatedly. This flow direction reversing behavior may de-
grade the thermal performance of PHP, but the reduction in heat
transfer rate is small, about 10% as seen in Table 3. The reason
for the reversing behavior seems to be non-uniform distribution
of working fluid inside tubes.
3. Numerical simulation
As the pulsating heat pipes have recently drawn a great atten-
tion in the field of heat dissipation technique for high and localized
heat-source devices, there have been many theoretical studies in
pursuit of computational simulation of pulsating actions of a PHP.
The literature indicates, however, that successful simulation of ac-
tual pulsating actions seems scarce. In the present study, a three-
dimensional computational fluid dynamics modeling has been de-
veloped for pulsating heat pipe and the simulation has been able
to show actual pulsating and circulating actions. The model the
PHP consists of four sections: evaporator, condenser, adiabatic 1
and adiabatic 2 as show in Fig. 6. According to the previous ex-
perimental study [18], the filling ratio in the range of 50-60% for
R123 is suitable to achieve high thermal performance. The present
numerical simulations were performed for these two filling ratios:
50% and 60%. The cases FR = 50% and FR = 60% are named Case 1
and Case 2. Various parameters associated with the PHP geometry
are found in Table 1. The present simulations used ANSYS Fluent
v14.5.
3.1. Governing equations
The previous study on visualization of PHP reveals that the flow
pattern of the working fluid inside the PHP is generally related to
the magnitude of applied heat flux [9]. When the heat flux is very
Fig. 4. Flow motion of slug flow in a bend of heating section.
5
low but enough to start the pulsating action, the dominant flow
pattern of the working fluid is the slug flow. Under this condi-
tion, the oscillation of the working fluid is quite random with very
low velocity. As the heat flux becomes higher, the flow pattern is
likely to change to semi-annular flow and even the annular flow.
From the experimental observation of flow patterns for the prac-
tical thermal conditions of 80°C wall temperature, the slug flow is
the dominant flow pattern. Base on this conclusion, the Volume Of
Fluid (VOF) two-phase flow model is a compatible method to sim-
ulate the PHP.
The VOF model is a surface-tracking technique applied to a
fixed Eulerian mesh. In the VOF method, the positions of vapor,
liquid, and interface in the computational cells are represented by
the volume fraction α v and α l , where subscripts v and l represent
vapor and liquid, respectively. The liquid phase only exists in the
cell where α v = 0 and the vapor phase only exists where α v = 1.
Naturally, the vapor–liquid interface locates in the cell where 0 <
α v < 1. In each control volume, the volume fractions of all phases
sum up to unity,
αv + αl = 1 (2)
In general, we can specify the primary and secondary phases
whichever way we prefer. In this model, vapor was defined as the
primary phase to improve the solution stability and is treated as a
compressible ideal gas.
The tracking of the interface(s) between the phases is generally
accomplished by the solution of a continuity equation for the vol-
ume fraction of one (or more) of the phases. For the phase q, this
equation has the following form
 

1 ∂ n
(α ρ ) + ∇ (αq ρqvq ) = Sαq + (m˙ pq − m˙ qp ) (3)
ρq ∂t q q p=1
where m˙ qp is the mass transfer from phase q to phase p and m˙ qp
is the mass transfer from p phase to phase q. By default, Sαq is the
source term on the right-hand side of Eq. (3) and equal to zero.
Momentum equation is as follows.
∂   
(ρv ) + ∇ .(ρvv ) = −∇ p + ∇ . μ ∇v + ∇vT + ρ g + F (4)
∂t
As discussed in the experimental results, the flow inside the
PHP tube is likely to be turbulent, thus turbulent modeling is in-
cluded in this study. The transport equations for k and ε in the
6 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317

Fig. 2. (a) Schematic of PHP, (b) photograph.

realizable k−ε model are as follow.


∂ ∂   ∂
μ  ∂k
(ρ k ) + ρ ku j = μ+ t + Gk + Gb − ρε −
∂t ∂xj ∂xj σk ∂ x j
YM + Sk (5)

∂   ∂

μ  Fig. 5. Variation of wall temperatures of test 16, 18 and 19.
∂ ρC2 ε 2 ε
(ρε ) + ρε u j = μ + t ∂ ε /∂ x j + ρC1 Sε − √ + C1ε C3ε Gb + Sε
∂t ∂xj ∂xj σε k + vε k
(6)
 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317
Fig. 6. Configuration of the PHP numerical model.
where
η  
C1 = max 0.43, , η=S
k
, S= 2Si j Si j
η+5 ε q = h f Tw − T f + qrad
In these equations, Gk represents the generation of turbulence
kinetic energy due to the mean velocity gradients. Gb is the gener-
ation of turbulence kinetic energy due to buoyancy. YM represents
the contribution of the fluctuating dilatation in compressible tur-
bulence to the overall dissipation rate. C2 and C1ε are constants.
σ k and σ ε are the turbulent Prandtl number for k and ε, respec-
tively. Sk and Sε are user-defined source terms. The current model
used the Fluent default settings for these parameters. The details
of the model is found in ANSYS Fluent documents [22].
The continuum surface force (CSF) model in ANSYS Fluent
[22] has been implemented such that the addition of surface ten-
sion to the VOF calculation results in a source term in the momen-
tum equation. The general form of surface tension equation is the
following.
ρ k1 ∇ α2
Fvol = σ12
1
2 ( ρ1 + ρ2 )
where ρ is the volume-averaged density computed and the above
equation shows that the surface tension source term for a cell is
proportional to the average density in the cell.
Energy equation is as follows.
∂   liquid-vapor distribution was initialized as shown in Fig. 8. The
(ρ E ) + ∇ .(v(ρ E + p) ) = ∇ . ke f f ∇ T + Sh
∂t
The VOF model treats energy E and temperature T as mass-
averaged variables.
n
q=1 αq ρq Eq
E = n
q=1 αq ρq
where Eq for each phase is based on the specific heat of that phase
and the shared temperature.
The properties ρ and keff (effective thermal conductivity) are
shared by the phases. The source term, Sh , contains contributions
from radiation, as well as any other volumetric heat sources. The
fluid properties in the above governing equations are determined
7
by the presence of the component phases in each control volume,
ρ = αv ρv + (1 − αv )ρl (11)
μ = αv μv + (1 − αv )μl (12)
The ANSYS Fluent supports two models for simulating the inter-
phase mass transfer through evaporation-condensation [22]. With
the VOF formulation, only Lee model could be used. Lee [22] model
is a simplified saturation model for evaporation and condensation
processes. The key premise of this model is that phase change is
driven primarily by deviation of interfacial temperature from Tsat
and the phase change rate is proportional to this deviation. There-
fore, the phase change occurs while maintaining temperatures of
the saturated phase and interface equal to Tsat . The model assumes
that mass is transferred at constant pressure and quasi-thermo-
equilibrium state according to the following relations.
If Tl > Tsat (evaporation):
(Tl − Tsat )
m˙ lv = coeff∗αl ρl (13)
Tsat
If Tv < Tsat (condensation):
(Tsat − Tv )
m˙ vl = coeff∗αv ρv (14)
Tsat
When a constant temperature boundary condition is applied to
the wall, the heat flux to the wall from a fluid cell is computed as
(7)
 
(15)
3.2. Geometry and mesh
The computational domain was modeled to simulate the exper-
iment given in the previous section, as shown in Fig. 6. The tube
wall thickness was not modeled in the present analysis to avoid
treating a conjugate heat transfer problem. To compare the tube
wall temperature behavior between the simulation and the exper-
iment, twelve points were chosen on the adiabatic region 1 as
marked with a square symbol in Fig. 6. The meshing configuration
of the domain is shown in Fig. 7. The tube lengthwise mesh size
was 1.85 mm and the cross sectional mesh layout is also shown
in the figure. The thickness of the first layer from the wall was
0.096 mm. The hexahedral mesh was used for entire domain and
the total number of elements was 150,570.
(8)
3.3. Initial and boundary conditions
The initial and boundary conditions were set as close to exper-
imental conditions as possible to simulate the experiment given
in the previous section, as was the domain geometry. A random
(9) initial temperature of both liquid and vapor were set to 52.45 °C
and the initial pressure was set to the saturation pressure of ini-
tial temperature. The constant temperature boundary conditions
were applied to the wall boundary of condenser and evaporator.
The condenser wall was set to 25 °C and the evaporator wall was
(10) set to 80 °C. The saturation temperature of working fluid was pro-
vided as a function of pressure. A set of preliminary simulations re-
vealed that weather the density was set to constant or to variable
was important. Thus vapor density was calculated by the ideal gas
law and liquid density was given by a function of temperature. The
major parameters of the simulation including the boundary condi-
tions are summarized in Table 5. The equations of saturation tem-
perature and liquid density of R123 were obtained by least-square
8 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317

Fig. 7. Illustration of meshing on tube cross section and lengthwise.

Table 5 3.4. Results and discussions

Parameters and boundary conditions for nu-
merical simulations.
In the present study, a three-dimensional computational fluid
Parameters Value dynamics modeling has been developed for a closed-type pulsating
Working fluid R123 heat pipe and the simulation has been able to show actual opera-
Tube inner diameter 1.85 mm tion of the PHP. In order to validate the proposed numerical model,
Wall boundary conditions the simulation results were compared with the experimental mea-
Heating section 80 °C
surements. In the present simulations, only the circulating motion
Cooling section 25 °C
Filling ratio 50%, 60% was observed in both cases of different filling ratio. The volume
Initial conditions fraction distribution and flow direction, wall temperature, and heat
Pressure 212.46 kPa transfer rate are discussed.
Temperature 323.15 K
The total fluid mass inside the heat pipe was checked in every
calculation by exporting the integration of all phase mass in Flu-
ent and it was found that the total mass was conserved through-
out the transient calculation. The initial liquid-phase fluid filling in
fitting of the properties from the REFPROP 9.0 and these are as fol- the heat pipe was typically 50% or 60% so there was free vapor vol-
low. ume to accommodate the change of density due to variable density
modeling.
Tsat =268.269+3.6799×10−4 P − 6.1422×10−10 P 2 +4.3892×10−16 P 3
(16)
3.4.1. Volume fractions and circular motion
Fig. 9 illustrates volume fractions of liquid and vapor at differ-
ent times (red color represents the vapor and blue color repre-
sents the liquid). To show the transient characteristic of the mo-
tion, the void fraction contours are given together for six different
ρL =978.327+13.06T −0.0759T 2 +1.70539×10−4 T 3 −1.493×10−7 T 4 times of 0, 1.5, 3.4, 5.6, 6.3 and 25 s. It is observed that long liquid
(17) columns are produced by condensation, broken into smaller col-
 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317 9

represents the temperature of fluid inside the tube at the time

the fluid passes the measuring position and this wall temperature
could be more strongly affected by the liquid than the vapor be-
cause the thermal conductivity of liquid is much higher than that
of vapor.
Fig. 10 shows the predicted wall temperatures for the case of
60% filling ratio and those of 50% filling ratio also look similar to
these. The locations of twelve points of temperature measurement
are indicated in Fig. 6. The fluctuating pattern of the calculated
wall temperatures showed good agreement with the experimen-
tal observation shown in Fig. 5. The wall temperature variations
are characterized in two distinct patterns; one for odd-numbered
points (blue lines) and the other for even-numbered points (red
lines). The wall temperatures at odd-numbered points fluctuate in
the range which is lower than the range of even-numbered points.
In general, oscillating pattern shows smaller temperature differ-
ence but circulating pattern brings large temperature difference. So
the pattern in Fig. 10 can be compared with Test 19 in Fig. 5, both
circulating patterns.
This unique characteristic of wall temperature behavior can be
attributed to the characteristic of the circulation motion. The tem-
perature of the fluid which leaves the heating section is generally
higher than the temperature of the fluid which leaves the cooling
section. Since the direction of circulation in this case is counter-
clockwise, the temperature at the even-numbered points are al-
ways higher than that of the odd-numbered points. This feature
can imply that by observing the wall temperatures, the regime of
Fig. 8. Random liquid–vapor distribution at the initial time (t = 0) for the case of
motion and the direction of motion can be determined. The fig-
FR = 50%.
ure also shows the difference in the amplitude of wall temperature
Table 6 fluctuation between the odd-numbered and the even-numbered
Fluid velocity calculation of simulation results points. Such a difference in fluctuation amplitude was also ob-
From time (s) To time (s) Distance (mm) t (s) Velocity (m/s) served in the experiment.

3.56 3.58 19 0.02 0.95

3.58 3.60 18 0.02 0.9
3.4.3. Heat transfer rate
3.60 3.62 17 0.02 0.85 The heat transfer rate from the wall to the fluid can be obtained
3.62 3.64 16 0.02 0.8 by integrating the heat flux across the wall. The integration was
3.64 3.66 16 0.02 0.8 done separately for the heating and the cooling sections. Fig. 11 il-
lustrates the time-variations of heat transfer rates in both heating
and cooling sections for the two different filling-ratio cases. In the
umn by evaporation, and they are circulating along the tubes, in early period, the heat transfer rates of heating and cooling fluc-
most cases, in the counterclockwise direction. tuate with large amplitude. It looks that the fluctuation of heat-
At the initial time t = 0 s, the vapor plug and liquid slug dis- ing rate is more severe than the cooling rate. However, this large
tribute randomly inside the tube. At time t = 1.5 s, the start-up fluctuation soon disappears after about ten seconds and the heat-
process of PHP begins. The liquid slugs combine to a long liquid ing rate becomes equal to the cooling rate, indicating quasi-steady
column locating on the cooling section. At time t = 3.4 s, because state operation of the PHP.
of the difference in pressure between the heating and cooling re- The average heat transfer rates were calculated by integrating
gions inside the tube, the liquid columns start to travel in one di- the value from t = 20 s to t = 25 s in which quasi-steady state op-
rection. As we can see, in this case, the liquid columns move in the eration is achieved. The results are compared with the experimen-
counterclockwise. At time t = 5.6 s, the liquid columns still move tal data in Fig. 12. Although the agreement is fairly good, it is noted
downward. However, the liquid columns move slower and start to that the experimental data showed that the average heat transfer
reverse the direction of motion. At time t = 6.3 s, the liquid col- rate was about 180 W and there was little difference between the
umn motion is reversed to the clockwise direction. These liquid two filling ratios. Meanwhile, the simulation results show that the
columns combine with the smaller liquid slugs ahead. This behav- heat transfer rate of 60% filling ratio is about 10% higher than that
ior of liquid column motion occurs repeatedly. of 50% filling ratio.
The fluid velocity in the simulation was sampled and given in The simulation shows higher heat transfer rate in FR = 60%
Table 6 to compare it with the experimental data shown in Table 2. than that of FR = 50%, while the experimental results show little
The fluid velocity in the experiment ranged from 0.46 m/s to difference between the two filling ratios. Theoretically, higher fill-
1.20 m/s and in the simulation it ranged from 0.8 m/s to 0.95 m/s, ing ratio provides more liquid to evaporate thus results in higher
indicating reasonable agreement in fluid velocity. The motion pat- heat transfer rate. But too high filling ratio provides little room
tern in the experiment was mainly circulating, but sometimes os- to accommodate the vapor to condense in cooling section. There-
cillating pattern was also observed. But in the simulation, the mo- fore it can be said that the simulation shows more correct trend
tion pattern was circulating in all cases. of the effect of filling ratio on heat transfer than the experimen-
tal data, but the difference seems small that it is hard to neglect
3.4.2. Wall temperature any counterbalancing mechanisms in heat transfer. It is generally
In the experimental measurement, the wall temperature is nor- known that the charge ratio ranging from 20% to 80% will make
mally used to evaluate the motion behavior of working fluid. It the PHP device operate as a true pulsating heat pipe. An optimal
10 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317

Fig 9. Transient behavior of volume fractions of liquid (blue) and vapor (red) (FR = 60%).
 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317
Fig. 10. Variation of wall temperatures (FR = 60%).
Fig. 11. Heat transfer rates of heating and cooling: (a) FR = 50% and (b) 60%.
charge ratio exists for each particular PHP setup. In our study, the
optimum charge ratio is around 50–60%.
The grid independence was checked with the focus on the wall
function point of view. In this study, the standard wall function
was applied for the realizable k−ε turbulence model. For the stan-
dard wall function, the y-plus value should be typically in the
range of 30 and 300. To determine the distance from the wall for
11
Fig. 12. Comparison of heat transfer rate between experiment and simulation.
the first cell, the y-plus of 30 was chosen. From the experiment,
it was observed that the magnitude of velocity was in the range
of near 1.2 m/s. With this velocity and the y-plus of 30, the calcu-
lated layer thickness was 0.0906 mm and the actual mesh value
was 0.0961 mm. One case with smaller first-layer of 0.059 mm
was tested and the predicted heat transfer rate increased by 13%
and thus it overpredicted the experimental data by 18%.
4. Conclusion
An experimental and analytical study of pulsating heat pipe
(PHP) has been carried out in order to develop a more reliable nu-
merical simulation model. The test PHP was made of transparent
Pyrex tubes for visualization purpose. The inner diameter of tube
was 1.85 mm and a total of sixteen tubes formed eight turns of
PHP. Both heating and cooling were provided by water jackets in
which inlet and outlet temperatures were precisely measured and
these were used to calculate heat transfer rates. The working fluid
was R123. Visualization using a high-speed camera showed vari-
ous flow patterns as well as the fluid motions. The wall tempera-
ture measured at various locations revealed its relation to the fluid
motion and the direction of circulation. The circulation motion was
dominant in most tests. The heat transfer rate was measured and
the difference for filling ratio of 50 and 60% was little.
A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics modeling
has been developed for pulsating heat pipe using ANSYS Flu-
ent v14.5. The VOF model with variable density and vapor pres-
sure relation successfully simulated the circulating motions of PHP.
The simulation of the experiment conducted in the present study
showed the same circulating motion as the experiment. The pre-
dicted wall temperatures also showed the same indication of mode
of flow motion and the flow direction as observed in the experi-
ment. The predicted heat transfer rates agreed well with the ex-
perimental data within 5%. The success of the simulation of the
experiment implies that the realizable k-ε turbulence model is ap-
propriate to PHP simulation and the use of variable density for liq-
uid and vapor and the vapor pressure equation is crucial.
Declaration of Competing Interest
I have no conflict of interest in publishing the manuscript ti-
tled “An experiment and three-dimensional numerical simulation
of pulsating heat pipes” in the International Journal of Heat and
Mass Transfer.
12 D.-T. Vo, H.-T. Kim and J. Ko et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 150 (2020) 119317
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Duy-Tan Vo: Investigation, Writing - original draft. Hyoung-Tak
Kim: Visualization, Validation. Junghyuk Ko: Methodology, Investi-
gation. Kwang-Hyun Bang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing
- review & editing.
Acknowledgment
This work has been supported by the National Research Foun-
dation of Korea (Grant No. 2018R1D1A1B07049027).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.
2020.119317.
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