Analysis of chaotic flow in a 2D multi-turn closed-loop pulsating heat pipe

Numerical study has been conducted for the chaotic flow in a multi-turn closed-loop pulsating heat pipe (PHP). Heat flux and constant temperature boundary conditions have been applied for heating and cooling sections respectively. Water was used as working fluid. Volume of Fluid (VOF) method has been employed for two-phase flow simulation. Volume fraction results showed formation of perfect vapour and liquid plugs in the fluid flow of PHP. Non-linear time series analysis, power spectrum density, correlation dimension and autocorrelation function were used to investigate the chaos. Absence of dominating peaks in the power spectrum density was a signature of chaos in the pulsating heat pipe. It was found that by increasing the filling ratio and evaporator heating power the correlation dimension increases. Decreasing of the autocorrelation function with respect to time showed the prediction ability is finite as a result of chaotic state. An optimal filling ratio of 60% and minimum thermal resistance of 1.62 °C/W were found for better thermal performance of the pulsating heat pipe. It is notable that two dimensional simulations in current study lead better understanding of the mechanism and validating the numerical method for full three dimensional modeling.