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International audience; This paper aims to study and understand the behaviour of a CPLTA (Capillary Pumped Loop for Terrestrial Applications) in different operating conditions. This CPL, designed for power electronics cooling applications, has been analysed from two different points of view by comparing its operating behaviour with Ethanol and Methanol as working fluids. The influence of the fluids on CPLTA was experimentally explored by modifying: the thermal characteristics (applied heat flux density on the evaporator walls, saturation temperature in the reservoir and condenser inlet temperature) and the hydraulic characteristics (by acting on a setting valve to generate controlled and increasing pressure losses in the vapour line) in order to show how they impact the behaviour of the loop. Thermal aspects of the loop were analysed, including changes of evaporator conductance. To obtain the thermodynamic cycles and evaporator conductance, based on the real evaporation temperature in the porous wick, a theoretical study was conducted using a specific post-processing tool.

International audience; A particular flat plate pulsating heat pipe (FPPHP), filled with FC72, is tested during the 62(th) and 64(th) ESA parabolic flight campaigns under vertical orientation. The FPPHP is made of a thin copper plate, in which a curved channel disposed with 11 U-turns is milled and closed on the top face by a transparent borosilicate plate. The particular characteristics is that the equivalent hydraulic diameter of the square channel (2.5 x 2.5 mm(2)) is above the working fluid capillary diameter on ground, inducing a stratification of the liquid/vapor phases under ground and hyper-gravity conditions, whatever the orientation. The energy transfer mode in such conditions is represented either by pure pool boiling inside the channels almost completely filled by the liquid phase or by an annular flow pattern inside the channels mostly filled by the refrigerant vapor. Instead, during the microgravity phases, the fluid regime naturally turns into a slug-plug flow pattern. During the transition from 1.8 g to 0 g a rapid dry-out may occur in some of the channels, followed by a similarly fast reaction of liquid plugs moving towards the evaporator from the condenser zone. Such stop-and-start motion events continue during the whole microgravity period, leading to strong temperature oscillations, but also to a still acceptable thermal performance of the device.

A study on the start-up phases of a capillary pumped loop for terrestrial application (CPLTA) is proposed in this paper. Experimental analysis and numerical modeling, using a one-dimensional spatial discretization model, based on thermohydraulic equations and solved by nodal network/electrical analogy, are presented to study the thermal and hydraulic behavior of the loop for methanol and n-pentane as working fluids, during start-up transient phases. The experimental observations are backed up by the numerical model to help the transient and steady analysis of this kind of loop. The precise numerical study allows to have a better understanding of the complicated phenomena happening during the start-up and to have a global view of the behavior of the capillary pumped loop for integrated power (CPLIP) during these phases. In this study, it will be also shown the influence of vapor line solid walls thermal inertia and its impact on the dynamic behavior and on the success of the start-up of the loop.

This study focuses on the regulation of a two-phase capillary pumped loop. The aim is to adjust the temperature and therefore the pressure in the reservoir in real time in order to reject the disturbance which occurs in the evaporator due to high-power cycles of electronic equipment. Regulation is achieved through a state feedback approach, which appeared to be very efficient for other fields of application. A very fast model of the thermal behavior of the loop is required. Low order models are elaborated via the Modal Identification Method. This model, built from in situ measurements, is valid around a nominal operating point where we can consider the behavior of the loop linear. A Kalman filter is introduced in order to estimate the state of the system in real time. Two types of disturbance are considered: a slow and a fast one, in order to simulate a real power cycle. Results show that the control of the evaporator temperatures, adjusting the reservoir temperature, is quite satisfying when the disturbance variations are smooth in time. In this case, the objective, which is to limit the temperature variations at the evaporator, in order to avoid deterioration of the high-power electronics, is reached.

International audience; A study of high-performance power electronics and their associated high efficiency cooling system is proposed in this work. The purpose of the research is to find, design, study and optimize high-efficiency power electronics cooling system for a hybrid propulsion aircraft. The purpose is to find the most performing and efficient cooling system to allow power electronic converters to operate with the highest performances possible. After a study focused on the most suitable solutions, a passive capillary pumped system was retained because of its performances and energetic efficiency. Here, a study of this particular system is presented. The Capillary Pumped Loop for Integrated Power (CPLIP) or CPLTA (Capillary Pumped Loop for Terrestrial Applications) is introduced: numerical and experimental results are proposed to show the performances of this loop. It will be also shown that the loop is able to ensure the temperature requirements for power modules. After an introduction on this kind of cooling system and its working principles, the loop behavior will be experimentally studied while a finite volume solver will be used to obtain 3D temperature map of power converter modules. Other than the capability to ensure the temperature controllability, it will be shown how this loop is able to ensure and go beyond the required power coefficient to allow these systems to fly.

International audience; A Flat Plate Pulsating Heat Pipe (FPPHP) filled with an ordinary liquid (water) and a self-rewetting mixture (dilutes aqueous solutions of long-chain alcohols with unusual surface tension behavior) is investigated under variable gravity conditions on board a ‘Zero-g’ plane during the 65th Parabolic Flight Campaign of the European Space Agency. The FPPHP thermal performance in terms of evaporator and condenser temperatures, start-up levels and flow regimes is characterized for the two working fluids and a power input ranging from 0 to 200 W (up to 17 W/cm2 at the heater/evaporator wall interface). The experimental set-up also includes a transparent plate enabling the visualization of the oscillating flow patterns during the experiments. For a low power input (4 W/cm2), the pulsating heat pipe filled with pure water is not able to work under low-g conditions, because the evaporator immediately exhibits dry-out conditions and the fluid oscillations stops, preventing heat transfer between the hot and cold side and resulting in a global increase of the temperatures. On the other hand, the FPPHP filled with the self-rewetting fluid runs also during the microgravity phase. The liquid rewets several times the evaporator zone triggering the oscillatory regime. The self-rewetting fluid helps both the start-up and the thermal performance of the FPPHP in microgravity conditions.

International audience; Improvement of a new design for a capillary pumped loop (CPL) ensuring high dissipation electronics cooling in ground transportation has been carried out over recent years. Experimental studies on the hybrid loop, which share some characteristics with the standard CPL and loop heat pipe (LHP), have underlined the sizable potential of this new system, particularly with regard to its upcoming industrial applications. In order to obtain a reliable tool for sizing and design of this CPL for terrestrial applications (CPLTA), the present transient thermohydraulic modeling has been developed. Based on the nodal method, the model’s originality consists of transcribing balance equations under electrical networks by analogy. The model’s validation is provided by experimental results from a new CPLTA bench with three parallel evaporators. Large-scale numerical evaluation of loop behavior in a gravity field with a single evaporator shall facilitate understanding of the different couplings between loop parts. In addition, modeling of a multi-evaporator loop is introduced and compared with recent experimental results.

International audience; In the context of high-dissipation electronics cooling for ground transportation, a new design of two-phase loop has been improved in recent years: the capillary pumped loop for terrestrial application (CPLTA). This hybrid system, between the two standard capillary pumped loop (CPL) and loop heat pipe (LHP), has been widely investigated with a single evaporator, and so a single dissipative area, to know its mean operating principles and thermohydraulic couplings between the components. To aim to extend its scope of applications, a new experimental CPLTA with three evaporators in parallel is studied in this paper with methanol as working fluid. Even if the dynamics of the loop in multi-evaporators mode appears on the whole similar to that with a single operating evaporator, additional couplings are highlighted between the several evaporators. A decoupling between vapor generation flow rate and pressure drop in each evaporator is especially revealed. The impact of this phenomenon on the conductance at evaporator is analyzed.

Low temperature thermal to electrical energy converters have the potential to provide a route for recovering waste energy. In this paper, we propose a new configuration of a thermal harvester that uses a naturally driven thermal oscillator free of mechanical motion and operates between a hot heat source and a cold heat sink. The system exploits a heat induced liquid-vapour transition of a working fluid as a primary driver for a pyroelectric generator. The two-phase instability of a fluid in a closed looped capillary channel of an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) creates pressure differences which lead to local high frequency temperature oscillations in the range of 0.1–5 K. Such temperature changes are suitable for pyroelectric thermal to electrical energy conversion, where the pyroelectric generator is attached to the adiabatic wall of the OHP, thereby absorbing thermal energy from the passing fluid. This new pyroelectric-oscillating heat pipe (POHP) assembly of a low temperature generator continu- ously operates across a spatial heat source temperature of 55 C and a heat sink temperature of 25 C, and enables waste heat recovery and thermal energy harvesting from small temperature gradients at low temperatures. Our electrical measurements with lead zirconate titanate (PZT) show an open circuit voltage of 0.4 V (AC) and with lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate (PMN-PT) an open circuit volt- age of 0.8 V (AC) at a frequency of 0.45 Hz, with an energy density of 95 pJ cm 3 for PMN-PT. Our novel POHP device therefore has the capability to convert small quantities of thermal energy into more desirable electricity in the nW to mW range and provides an alternative to currently used batteries or centralised energy generation.

International audience; Various experiments were conducted on two full-size Pulsating Heat Pipes (PHP) which differed from their diameter, number of turns, and working fluid. The analysis of the experimental results showed two kind of operating curves (overall thermal resistance vs. heat rate): for low heat fluxes, the curve is irregular and the PHP performance is sensitive to the orientation. For high heat fluxes, the operating curve is smooth and independent from the orientation. To contribute to the analysis of these results, experiments were conducted at the scale of a single branch of a PHP. An oscillating motion was imposed to a single liquid plug surrounded by two vapour slugs in a capillary tube and high speed visualisations were performed. The test section was either adiabatic or heated. The adiabatic experiments brought to the fore the importance of dynamic contact angles in the flow and the dissymmetry between the advancing and receding contact angle. The non-adiabatic experiments showed that at low flux, the flow is disturbed by bubble nucleation, while at high heat flux, the main heat transfer mechanism is thin film evaporation, with a completely different thermal and hydrodynamic behaviour.

Axially grooved heat pipes are devices used mainly to dissipate heat flow through the latent heat of phase change of a fluid at a saturation state. Part of the heat injected at the evaporator flows through a micro-region where the meniscus remains hung at the top of each groove. This article presents a steady-state model built to study the heat and mass transfers in this zone. A parametric study has been performed on aluminum/ammonia heat pipes, mainly used for satellite thermal control, and it led to interesting results, especially regarding the incidence of the radius of curvature of the meniscus and the influence of temperatures on the transfers occurring in the problem.

Heat pipe is a high-performance heat transfer device that has become essential onboard telecommunication satellites when ensuring thermal management. Its operating principle is based on the phase change of a pure fluid inside a long closed tube. The fluid is evaporated at one extremity and condensed at the other so that heat in transferred by enthalpy variation from liquid to vapor. A passive capillary pumping process ensures liquid motion. Indeed, capillary structures are highly reliable and do not necessitate any additional power consumption. In microgravity conditions, most of them are composed of an internal capillary structure with axial grooves taking into account the particularly low fluid flow resistance inherent to such structures. These profiles are manufactured by extrusion, which allows for high reproducibility at a very small cost per unit compared with other capillary structures [1]. Since the maximum capillary pumping value depends to some extent upon the geometry of the capillary structure, there exists a maximum heat transfer power beyond which capillary pumping is not sufficient to counterbalance the liquid-vapor pressure drop, which is due to an increasing mass flow along with augmented power. At that point, the evaporator is not adequately supplied with liquid and is gradually drained until it reaches its point of switch-over (also called “hum out” point). To avoid this extreme case, accurate understanding of liquid flow behavior is required in order to optimize the groove geometries and to increase the transport capacity/mass of system ratio, which is a fundamental aspect in space applications.

This paper reports a study of crystallisation kinetics in small volumes of undercooled water-MPG (monopropylene glycol) mixture. The experimental cell is a vertical cylinder (height 5 mm, diameter 2r(c) = 7.5 mm); its bottom section is closed by a Plexiglas disc that transmits light from the lower part of the cylinder to a high-speed digital camera. Photographic recordings allow the determination of the crystal growth rate. When the antifreeze mass fraction is below 25 wt%,, crystallisation is clearly divided into two stages: the growth of dendritic crystals in the undercooled solution followed by the passage of the interdendritic solidification front. Dendrite growth induces a sudden temperature increase in the mixture, while the passage of the interdendritic solidification front determines the time at which sensible heat effects again predominate. The results show that the dendrite growth rate is an increasing function of the degree of undercooling and a decreasing function of the antifreeze mass fraction. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

International audience; This paper presents a transient thermohydraulic modeling, initially developed for a capillary pumped loop in gravitational applications, but also possibly suitable for all kinds of two-phase fluid systems. Using finite volumes method, it is based on Navier-Stokes equations for transcribing fluid mechanical aspects. The main feature of this 1D-model is based on a network representation by analogy with electrical. This paper also proposes a parametric study of a counterflow condenser following the sensitivity to inlet mass flow rate and cold source temperature. The comparison between modeling results and experimental data highlights a good numerical evaluation of temperatures. Furthermore, the model is able to represent a pretty good dynamic evolution of hydraulic variables.