A mathematical study of water migration in heat pipe from plants.

Abstract Heat pipe is being widely used nowadays in industry as a high efficiency heat transfer device. For the development of heat pipe, many attempts have been made to enhance its performance by mimicking biology, including the optimization of structure and flow patterns in heat pipe wicks. Constructing biporous, composite, and nanopillar wicks with aim of achieving hierarchical structure has been found through the learning of natural solutions. And bionic approach studying plant water migration provides another path to the fluid flow enhancement inside heat pipe as well. Forces involved in the water migration process in plants include the capillary effect, friction, gravity and transpiration effect, and all these happen in heat pipe as well. The investigation through plant water migration can provide a guidance to the heat transfer performance analysis and wick structure design. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology is used in this paper to scan live plants, providing the possibility of visualizing the internal structures in vivo and obtaining water transport velocity in xylem vessels. In addition, a novel mathematical model on the forces in plant water migration and heat pipe is proposed in this paper. The result from mathematical calculation is compared with the experimental measured result. This paper also successfully put transpiration effect and friction into consideration, as our innovation syntheses of a low level of hierarchical structure and integrates integral wicks includes evaporator, adiabatic, and condenser as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]