Experimental investigation on the start-up performance of a loop heat pipe with three flat disk evaporators combined

To promote the heat transport applicability of the loop heat pipe(LHP) for high power and multi-heat sources, a multi-evaporator loop heat pipe(ME-LHP) system with three flat disk evaporators equipped with separate vapor lines was proposed and experimentally studied for the first time. The effects of the interaction between evapo-rators, the heat load distribution, and the gravity-assisted angle on the startup behavior of ME-LHP were investigated respectively. The results show that with the separated-vaporline structure, the adverse impact be-tween evaporators was greatly reduced. The best performance appeared when all three evaporators were involved. At unequal heat load working conditions, the ME-LHP obtained the optimal startup performance when high heat load was applied on evaporators with a superior position in liquid separation. Besides, the outlet temperature of all evaporators tended to be consistent, even if multiple evaporators worked under unequal heat loads. The gravity-assisted angle affected the start-up process by changing the non-uniformity of liquid distribution. Compared with the gravity-assisted tilt theta = 10?, the highest performance was improved by 77 % for theta = 2(?), and the peak load could reach 300 W. The present study may extend the application of the flat plane type of loop heat pipe for solving the multi-heat-sources dissipation problem.