Bionic Inspired Study of Heat Pipe from Plant Water Migration

Heat pipe is well regarded as super thermal conductor and has a wide range of applications in the variety of industry sections. A great number of researches have been done on enhancing the performance of heat pipe through improving the flow pattern. The research on plant water migration based on bionic engineering approach provides a very interesting path to the fluid flow enhancement inside heat pipe, and improvement of inner structure as well. The main forces that drive the water migrates in plants are capillary effect, friction, gravity and transpiration effect, and which are also the main driven forces in heat pipe. Although most researches on heat pipe focus on capillary effect against gravity, transpiration effect is still very important as dragging force occurs when water evaporates. And all these can be investigated through plant water migration. A mathematical model describing the water migration process in plant is proposed in this paper. And the result obtained from mathematical calculation is compared with the experimental measured result using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) technology. The perfect matching between the two results confirmed the possibility of using the mathematical model to analyze fluid flow in micro channels, including heat pipe. And it also successfully put transpiration effect and friction into consideration, which give out a clearer view of the forces inside heat pipe for further research.