Experimental study on heat transfer performance using a hybrid cooling method combined of a flat-plate heat pipe and spray cooling

A hybrid cooling system consists of spray cooling as condensing end and flat-plate heat pipe (FPHP) as heat-transfer medium was previously studied on the effects of the volume flow rate and the inlet temperature. As an extension, this paper using multi-nozzle arrays to promote the forced convection heat transfer and changing the surface roughness of the FPHP to improve the phase change heat transfer. It was found that the impinging energy and drainage channel formed by multi-nozzle arrays were the main reasons for the enhancement in convection region. However, in the phase-change section, a uniform thin liquid film and surface roughness apparently improved the evaporation and nucleate boiling. Relative to our previous study, a maximum heat flux removal was increased from 70 W/cm² to 90 W/cm² at surface roughness (Ra = 1.62 μm) with a surface superheat only 4.17℃, the heat transfer coefficient of 21.6 W·cm-2·K-1 and an enhancement of 28.6 % were obtained. Furthermore, the transition temperature and the temperature change rate were studied to explore the vapor flow modes and thermal response characteristics of the FPHP. As the transition temperature T_tr = 251 K, and the Knusden number＜0.01, the FPHP consistently maintained a continuum flow regime during startup, stabilization, and dry-out processes. Impressively, the temperature change rate of the FPHP remained below 0.015℃/s, resulting in a temperature change of only 0.9℃ within one minute. This exceptional temperature stability ensured reliable operation for electronic components.