Experimental investigation on operating behaviors of loop heat pipe with thermoelectric cooler under acceleration conditions

In this article, an experimental study was carried out to investigate the transient operating performance of a dual compensation chamber loop heat pipe (DCCLHP) with thermoelectric cooler (TEC) under acceleration conditions. In the current work, ammonia was selected as the working fluid. For the purpose of comparison, experimental work was also conducted under terrestrial gravity. Sensitivity analysis was performed to explore the effect of several control parameters such as the heat load, acceleration magnitude and TEC assist on the startup and operating performance of the DCCLHP. Experimental results indicate that the DCCLHP can operate to a steady state when the heat load changes from 25 W to 300 W under terrestrial gravity. It is worthy to note that the acceleration plays a significant impact on its operation, which can cause a high operating temperature or even a failure operation. The TEC assist with power of 10 W could improve the operating performance and reduce the operating temperature for the case of small heat load or acceleration magnitude When the acceleration exceeds 4 g, at large heat load，the effect of TEC assist on the operation at large heat load can be ignored.