location of the diffusion front (hot front) was found numerically by identifying a sudden rise in temperature which levelled off within 2°C of the previous reading. For example, these locations with respect to a given thermocouple are points similar to ‘E' marked in Figs 12 and 13. A comprehensive description of the analytical and numerical modelling and solution of this problem can be found in Ref. [4]. The results of the present work and those reported by Bystrov & Goncharov [5] were compared and found to have qualitative similarity between them in the transient characteristics. A quantitative comparison would be improper since their heat pipe was of different construction. Their test item was a 1.8 m long, 50 mm diameter, annular screen wicked sodiumargon heat pipe with no adiabatic section. The gas pressure they used was 70 mTorr. Comparison of Liquid State and Frozen State Startup Liquid state startup is faster and smoother than frozen state startup. For a typical power input of <2, = 564 W, these two startups were conducted. The results are shown in Figs. 16-19. It is evident from Fig. 18 that TO #3 registered very high temperature during the frozen state startup and the power had to be reduced slightly to continue the test. However, in the liquid state startup, there is no overshooting of temperature indicating smooth startup (Fig. 19). Conclusions An arterial type gas-loaded liquid metal heat pipe was designed, built and tested. It has been successfully demonstrated that the gas-loading did not adversely affect the priming of the long adiabatic artery groove. Transient startup tests were conducted on
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==