Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595

www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Effect of number of mesh layers and fluid loading on the

performance of screen mesh wicked heat pipes
R. Kempers, D. Ewing, C.Y. Ching *

Department of Mechanical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8S 4L7

Received 17 February 2005; accepted 1 July 2005

Available online 25 August 2005

Abstract

An experimental study has been performed to determine the effect of the number of mesh layers and amount of working fluid on
the heat transfer performance of copper–water heat pipes with screen mesh wicks. It was found that the effective thermal resistance
decreases with an increase in heat flux, and approaches an approximately constant value at higher heat fluxes. This non-linearity in
the thermal resistance is larger for wicks with fewer mesh layers. There is a small increase in thermal resistance of the heat pipe when
the thickness of the wick is increased, but this is significantly smaller than that predicted by models based on conduction heat trans-
fer across the wick. For all orientations, the maximum heat transfer through the heat pipe increased as the number of mesh layers of
the wick was increased, as expected. The heat pipes with amounts of working fluid close to that required to fully saturate the wick
performed similarly. Heat pipes with significantly less working fluid had somewhat lower effective thermal resistances, but the max-
imum heat transfer rate was significantly reduced.
Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Wicked heat pipes; Mesh layers; Fluid loading; Conduction model

1. Introduction
There has been renewed interest in the use of heat
pipes for thermal management due to increasing heat
flux requirements and thermal constraints in many
industrial applications. The thermal performance of a
wicked heat pipes is typically characterized by both its
maximum heat transport rate and its effective thermal
resistance. There are a number of different failure modes
that limit the maximum heat transfer rate in wicked heat
pipes [1–3]. In many moderate-temperature applica-
tions, the heat transport rate is typically limited by the
capillary pressure that can be generated by the wick
structure [3]. Hence, there has been considerable re-
search focused on developing better models to predict
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 905 525 9140x24998; fax: +1 905
572 7944.
E-mail address: chingcy@mcmaster.ca (C.Y. Ching).
the pressure drop that occurs in wicked heat pipes. This
has included numerous numerical and analytical investi-
gations that have solved the coupled equations for liquid
flow through the wick and the vapour flow for a range of
different conditions, including multiple heat sources and
transient start-up of the heat pipe [3–8].
There has been less research focusing on predicting
the heat transfer achieved for a given temperature differ-
ence by these heat pipes before the limits are encoun-
tered. The thermal performance of the heat pipe is
generally predicted using a one-dimensional thermal
resistance network, where each component of the heat
pipe is modelled by an associated thermal resistance
[2,9]. In typical low-temperature applications, it is gener-
ally thought that the thermal resistance of the saturated
wick structure in the evaporator and condenser regions
accounts for much of the thermal resistance of the heat
pipe. Thus, accurate models for the heat transfer through
these sections of wick are important for predicting the

1359-4311/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2005.07.004
590 R. Kempers et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595
effective thermal resistance of a wicked heat pipe. In
most cases, it is assumed that the heat transfer at the
evaporator and condenser sections occurs by conduction
through the saturated wick with evaporation or conden-
sation at the surface. This represents the upper limit of
the thermal resistance of the wick [9]. A number of mod-
els and correlations for the effective conductivity of
wire screen mesh wicks have been developed. These mod-
els range from the empirical [10–13], semi-empirical
[14,15], and the analytical [16,17]. The predictions from
these models differ by an order of magnitude for the same
wick structure. The thermal resistance of the saturated
wick depends on the geometry and properties of the wick
and the conductivity of the working fluid but are rela-
tively independent of heat flux. Several experiments have
shown that the overall thermal resistance of screen mesh
wicked heat pipes is non-linear, particularly at low heat
fluxes [14,18].
The objective of the current investigation was to
characterize the effect of the number of mesh layers
and the amount of working fluid (or fluid loading) has
on the performance of copper–water heat pipes with
mesh screen wicks.
2. Experimental facility and methodology
The heat pipes tested here were constructed using
copper tubing with an outer diameter of 9.53 mm and
an inner diameter of 6.22 mm and the heat pipes were
177.8 mm long, and the two ends were closed with
3.2 mm thick copper end caps that were silver soldered
Water Jacket
Heat Pipe
Thermocouple
Board
RTD B RTD A
RTD
Thermometer DAQ
I/O Box
Turbine
Chiller Flowmeter
Computer
(a)
Fig. 1. Heat pipe test facility: (a) schematic of facility layout and (b) schematic of heat pipe fixture.
in place. The wicks for each heat pipe were made from
a woven copper wire screen mesh with wire diameter
of 0.109 mm and 3.94 strands per mm.
The effect of fluid loading on the performance of the
heat pipes was tested using five heat pipes that each had
a three-layer screen mesh wicks. The range of fluid in the
heat pipes was determined by initially estimating the vol-
ume of fluid required to saturate the wick. A porosity
model typically used for wire screen meshes [1–3] was
used to calculate the porosity of the wick. This was then
multiplied by the bulk volume of the wick structure.
Tests were performed here for heat pipes that included
fluid loadings that corresponded to 50%, 80%, 100%,
120% and 150% of the amount of water required to sat-
urate the wick. This corresponded to 0.63 g, 1.01 g,
1.27 g, 1.52 g, and 1.9 g of water, respectively. The effect
of mesh layers was investigated by testing three addi-
tional heat pipes with 1, 2 and 6 layers of wire screen
mesh. In this case, each heat pipe was charged with
the estimated amount of water required to fully saturate
the wick; that is 0.46 g, 0.88 g and 2.24 g of water,
respectively.
The heat pipes tested here were characterized using
the experimental facility shown in Fig. 1a. Heat was ap-
plied to the heat pipe in a 50.8 mm long section using a
300 W electrical band heater that was wrapped around a
50.8 mm diameter brass annular block. The heat pipes
were mounted in a 9.53 mm diameter hole machined in
the center of the block. Thermal paste was used to en-
sure a good thermal contact between the heat pipe and
the block. The band heater and brass annulus were
wrapped with several layers of ceramic insulation to
Heater
Water Jacket
A Heat Pipe
Evaporator Section
V Covered with Insulation
Variac
Test Section Fixture
120VAC Stand
(b)
 R. Kempers et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595
minimize heat loss from this section. The condenser
section of the heat pipe was cooled using a 76.2 mm long
acrylic water jacket with an inner diameter of 17.9 mm.
Chilled water supplied from a dedicated chiller entered
and exited the water jacket through 11.1 mm diameter
ports positioned 9.5 mm from the ends of the condenser
section. The inlet and outlet temperatures of the cooling
water to the condenser section were measured using two
4-wire platinum resistance thermometers with an uncer-
tainty of 0.01 °C, and the flow rate was measured using a
dual-rotor turbine flowmeter with an uncertainty of
0.19% of flow rate. The 50.8 mm section between the
evaporator and condenser sections was insulated using
several layers of ceramic insulation to create an adia-
batic section. The test section was mounted on a stand
that allows the heat pipe to rotate relative to the vertical
direction as shown in Fig. 1b.
The surfaces of the heat pipes tested here were instru-
mented with eight 0.508 mm T-type thermocouples
mounted along the wall to measure the axial surface
temperature distribution in the evaporator and con-
denser sections. The thermocouples were placed in
grooves 0.762 mm deep machined along the outer wall
of the heat pipes. The thermocouples were soldered in
place using a 50/50 lead–tin solder, and the grooves
filled with solder in order to ensure a continuous thermal
path and an accurate measurement of heat pipe wall
temperature. The solder covers less than 5% of the tube
area and the grooves penetrate to less than half the
thickness of the wall. Thus, it was thought the effect
on the local temperature distribution inside the pipe
was negligible. The lower thermal conductivity around
the thermocouple junction would result in a slightly
longer time response in the measurement, but this was
not of interest in the present steady-state results. The
uncertainty of the thermocouples was 0.5 °C. The sig-
nals from the thermocouples, flowmeter and RTDs were
logged continuously using a data acquisition system and
PC.
The heat pipes were tested by setting the chiller to
hold the average condenser wall temperature at 20 °C.
The heater power was then increased and temperature
measurements were taken once the heat pipe had
reached steady state. The heat transfer rate into the
evaporator was estimated by subtracting estimates of
the natural convection losses from the heater from the
measured electrical power of the heater. The natural
convection losses around the insulated evaporator sec-
tion were estimated using the correlation given by [19]
and found to be less than 3% of the measured electrical
power at all power settings. The output heat transfer
rate from the condenser was computed by applying an
energy balance to the condenser flow. The effect of heat
losses to the ambient and viscous heating effects were
characterized independently, and were subtracted from
the output heat transfer rate. In all cases, the heat trans-
591
fer rate into the evaporator section and out of the con-
denser section agreed to within ±5%. The heat transfer
rate into the evaporator, Qevap, was used here to present
the data because the uncertainty in these measurements
was approximately ±1.8% and was typically lower than
the results for the condenser. The uncertainty in the
thermal resistance of the heat pipes was approximately
±20% for heat fluxes below 10 W, ±10% for heat fluxes
between 10 and 30 W and ±5% for heat fluxes above
approximately 30 W.
3. Results and discussion
The performance of the heat pipe with three layers of
wick and 1.27 g of water was initially examined in detail.
The wall temperature distributions along the evaporator
and condenser sections when the heat pipe was in the
horizontal orientation are shown in Fig. 2. The wall
temperature of the condenser was approximately uni-
form for all heat transfer rates, with an average value
of 20 ± 0.1 °C. The wall temperature in the evaporator
section was also relatively uniform for all heat transfer
rates, except at the two highest values. In this case, the
temperature increased at the end of the evaporator as
the heat transfer rate through the heat pipe was in-
creased. This is a characteristic of the onset of evaporator
dry-out [20]. The temperature distributions for the
other orientations were similar to the horizontal case.
At the highest heat fluxes, the non-uniformity of the
evaporator temperatures initiated from the end of the
heat pipe, even when the heat pipe was completely
inverted.
The change in heat transfer rate through the heat pipe
with the difference between the average temperature of
the evaporator and condenser are shown in Fig. 3
for all orientations. In all cases, the performance of
the device is non-linear at low temperature differences,
120
100 Q=182 W
Q=166 W
Q=143 W
80 Q=115 W
Q=99 W
Q=83 W
T (°C)
60 Q=67 W
Q=43 W
Q=24 W
Q=10 W
40
20
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Distance From Evaporator End (mm)
Fig. 2. Axial temperature distribution of heat pipe with three layers of
screen mesh in the horizontal orientation.
592 R. Kempers et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595

300 300

Vertical
250 + 45 Degrees 250
Horizontal
- 45 Degrees
200 Inverted 200
Q (W)

Q (W)
150 150

100 1 Layer
100
2 Layers
3 Layers
50 6 Layers
50

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 0
0 50 100 150 200
Te-Tc (°C)
Te-Tc (°C)

Fig. 3. Effect of orientation on the heat transfer rate of the heat pipe Fig. 4. Effect of mesh layers on heat transfer rate in the horizontal
with three layers of screen mesh. orientation.

particularly, for temperature differences below 20 °C
when there is very little heat transfer through the heat
pipe. At higher heat fluxes, the heat transfer increases
rapidly with the temperature difference across the heat
pipe at all orientations, indicating the thermal resistance
of the heat pipe is decreasing. The maximum heat trans-
fer occurs in the region where the heat transfer stops
increasing in Fig. 3. This corresponds to the increase
in the endmost evaporator temperatures in Fig. 2. The
operation of the heat pipe was steady in this region indi-
cating that the heat pipe continued to operate with a
shorter effective length in the evaporator. The heat
transfer performance was similar at all orientations up
to the maximum heat fluxes, except for the +45° orien-
tation, where the performance of the device is slightly
better than the other orientations for heat fluxes greater
than 150 W. As expected, the maximum heat transfer
decreased as the heat pipe was inclined relative to the
vertical and as the assistance of gravity decreased.
temperature differences, there was little evidence of a
non-linear region. For the larger temperature differ-
ences, the heat transfer rate for the heat pipe with six
layers of screen mesh was smaller than the other heat
pipes indicating the thermal resistance of this heat pipe
was higher as expected.
The thermal resistances of the heat pipes when they
were in the horizontal orientation are compared to the
thermal resistances predicted by the one-dimensional
model [12] in Fig. 5. The thermal resistance of the heat
pipes with 1, 2 and 3 layers of screen mesh initially de-
creased significantly with heat flux and approached a
constant for heat transfer rates above 150 W. The initial
decrease in the thermal resistance of the six-layer heat
pipe with heat flux was much less significant, and the
thermal resistance of the heat pipe is approximately con-
stant for heat transfer rates above 100 W. As a result,
the thermal resistance of the heat pipe with three or less

3.1. Effect of number of mesh layers 3

1 Layer
2 Layers
The heat transfer performance of the heat pipes with 2.5 3 Layers
different number of mesh layers is presented in Fig. 4 for 6 Layers
1 Layer - Model [12]
the vertical orientation. It is clear that the number of 2 2 Layers - Model [12]
3 Layers - Model [12]
mesh layers had an effect on the maximum heat transfer
Reff (K/W)

6 Layers - Model [12]

rate through the heat pipes as expected, and the non-lin- 1.5
ear heat transfer performance at the low heat fluxes. In
particular, for the heat pipe with a single layer of screen 1
mesh and there was no significant heat transfer for tem-
perature differences below 30 °C. The heat transfer in- 0.5
creased dramatically for this heat pipe at larger
temperature differences until onset of failure, resulting 0
in a more apparent non-linearity in the heat transfer per- 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Q (W)
formance. For the heat pipe with six layers of screen
mesh, however, the heat transfer rate increased approx- Fig. 5. Effect of mesh layers on the effective thermal resistance in the
imately linearly with temperature difference. Even at low horizontal orientation.
 R. Kempers et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595
layers of screen mesh were larger than the resistance of
the six-layer heat pipe at low heat fluxes. This result is
unexpected, and is not completely understood at this
point. Somewhat surprisingly, there was only a small
difference in the thermal resistance at the higher heat
transfer rates. In particular, the increase in resistance
was less than 50% when the number of layers was in-
creased from 1 to 6. This is much smaller than would
be expected from any of the one-dimensional conduc-
tion models since the thickness of the wick was increased
by a factor of approximately 6. For example, the ther-
mal resistances from the model of [12] indicates a nearly
linear relation between the thermal resistance and the
wick thickness, with a slight non-linearity in the model
due to the change in the material properties with tem-
perature (Fig. 5). The prediction from the model was
in reasonable agreement with the results for the heat
pipe with one layer of screen mesh, but significantly
overpredicts the thermal resistance of the heat pipes with
three and six layers of mesh. The model also cannot pre-
dict the change in thermal resistance with heat flux at
low heat fluxes (<100 W).
The predictions from the model were computed here
assuming that the layers of screen mesh stack without
significant intermeshing. Intermeshing of the layers of
screen mesh would have an impact on the conductivity
of the wick because the conductivity of the screen is
much higher than the water. The heat pipes used in
the tests were sectioned in order to characterize the de-
gree of intermeshing. Measurements revealed that there
was relatively no intermeshing between adjacent layers
of screen mesh.
The effect of mesh layers on the maximum heat trans-
fer is shown in Fig. 6. The maximum heat transport
capacity of all the heat pipes decreased as the heat pipe
was inclined from the vertical orientation. In the posi-
tively inclined and horizontal orientations, the six-layer
heat pipe exceeded the maximum power available in the
350
300
250
200
Qmax (W)
150
100
1 Layer
2 Layers
50 3 Layers
6 Layers
0 0
0 15 30 45 60 75 90
Angle from Vertical Orientation (°)
Fig. 6. Effect of mesh layers on maximum heat transfer rate.
593
test facility. The maximum heat transport increased with
the wick thickness, and is consistent with the results of
[15]. For a given heat flux, the liquid velocity in the wick
is lower for a thicker wick, and hence results in a lower
pressure drop.
3.2. Effect of fluid loading
The effective thermal resistances for heat pipes with
three layers of screen mesh and different fluid loadings
in the horizontal orientation are shown in Fig. 7. The
thermal resistances of the five heat pipes with the differ-
ent fluid loadings were similar in the other orientations.
In all cases, the thermal resistance decreased sharply as
the heat transfer rate increased for heat fluxes up to
approximately 100 W, and then remained relatively con-
stant. Thus, the non-linearity of the thermal resistance
does not seem to be affected by the amount of fluid in
the heat pipe. The effective thermal resistance of the heat
pipes generally increased when the fluid charge was in-
creased; although the heat pipes with 1.01–1.52 g of
water (80–120% of the amount of fluid to saturate the
wick) was not significantly different for heat transfer
rates greater than 100 W. The thermal resistance of the
heat pipe with 0.63 g of water was lower, but this heat
pipe had a significantly lower maximum heat transfer
since the working fluid did not completely saturate the
wick. The heat pipe with 1.9 g of water had a higher
thermal resistance. In this case, the excess liquid must
pool in the heat pipe, and affects the evaporation and
condensation processes. In all orientations, the heat
pipes with 0.63 g and 1.9 g of water had the lowest
and highest effective thermal resistance, respectively.
The range was 0.43–0.75 K/W at a heat transport rate
of 58 W.
The effect of orientation on the maximum heat trans-
port before the onset of failure is shown in Fig. 8. The
1.2
1.9 g
1 1.52 g
1.27 g
Facility Maximum
1.01 g
0.8 0.63 g
Reff (K/W)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
50 100 150 200 250
105 120 135 150 165 180 Q (W)
Fig. 7. Effect of fluid loading on the effective thermal resistance in the
horizontal orientation.
594 R. Kempers et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 26 (2006) 589–595
250
200
150
Qmax (W)
100
50
0 liquid accumulating in the wick at the condenser section
0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135
Angle from Vertical Orientation (°)
Fig. 8. Effect of fluid loading on the maximum heat transfer rate.
variation in the maximum heat transport with orienta-
tion for the heat pipes with 1.01 g, 1.27 g and 1.52 g of
water were similar. In these cases, the maximum heat
transport decreased continuously as the orientation of
the heat pipe was inclined from vertical. For the heat
pipe with 1.9 g of water, however, the maximum heat
transport increased approximately 10% as the orienta-
tion changed from vertical to horizontal, and then
decreased with further inclination. There was little
change in the maximum heat transport with inclination
for the heat pipe with 0.63 g of water. The maximum
heat transport in this case was approximately one-third
that of the heat pipes with 1.27 and 1.9 g of water.
4. Conclusions
The effect of wick thickness and fluid loading on the
heat transfer performance of wicked heat pipes was
experimentally investigated by testing heat pipes with
1–6 layers of wire screen mesh as a wick. For the heat
pipes with the smaller number of mesh layers, the effec-
tive thermal resistance was non-linear, especially at low
heat fluxes. The non-linearity is more significant as the
number of layers is decreased. The thermal resistance
decreases significantly with the heat flux, and then ap-
proaches a constant value. In the nearly constant region,
the thermal resistance increases with the number of mesh
layers. However, a sixfold increase in the number of
mesh layers resulted in only a 40% increase in thermal
resistance of the heat pipe, and is not consistent with
models based on conduction heat transfer through the
wick. The maximum heat transport rate before the onset
of failure increases with the number of mesh layers. Also,
as the heat pipes were inclined from vertical, the maxi-
mum heat transport capacity of the heat pipes decreased.
The effect of fluid loading was characterized by testing
heat pipes with three layers of screen mesh and five differ-
ent fluid loadings that represent both underloaded and
overloaded cases. Generally, all five heat pipes had sim-
1.9 g ilar heat transfer characteristics before the onset of fail-
1.52 g
1.27 g ure and exhibited roughly the same non-linearity at low
1.01 g heat fluxes. This indicates that the fluid loading is not
0.63 g
the cause of the non-linearity. The thermal resistance
of the heat pipes increased with the fluid loading. How-
ever, the heat pipes with fluid loadings close to the ‘‘ide-
ally’’ loaded case, defined as the amount of fluid required
to fully saturate the wick, exhibited little differences in
the effective thermal resistance. In the under-loaded heat
pipe, the onset of dry-out resulted in an increase of effec-
tive thermal resistance over time. This may be due to
150 165 180
of the heat pipe causing the evaporator section to remain
dry. Under-loading also resulted in a maximum heat
transfer rate significantly lower at all orientations while
overloading resulted in marginally higher maximum heat
transfer rates at all orientations besides vertical.
Acknowledgment
The support of Acrolab Ltd. and Materials and Man-
ufacturing Ontario (MMO) is gratefully acknowledged.
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