Effects of fluctuations of heating and cooling section temperatures on performance of a pulsating heat pipe

• Performance of a pulsating heat pipe with wall temperature fluctuation is studied.
• The fluctuations include a periodic component and a random component.
• The amplitude and frequency of the periodic component affect the performance.
• The standard deviation of random component did not have any effect on performance.

Pulsating heat pipe is a two-phase heat transfer device that transfers heat from heating section to cooling section via oscillatory liquid–vapor two-phase flow. The objective of this work is to study the effects of fluctuations of heating and cooling section temperatures on the oscillatory flow, temperature and pressure of the vapor plugs, as well as latent and sensible heat transfer of a pulsating heat pipe. The fluctuations of wall temperatures include a periodic component and a random component. The periodic component is characterized by the amplitude and frequency, while the random component is described by the standard deviations. The results showed that the frequency of the liquid slug oscillation decreases with increasing amplitude and frequency of the periodic fluctuation of the wall temperature. However, the change of different standard deviations did not have any effect on the performance of the PHP.