Design of heat pipes on board accelerating vehicles using the 1D/3D co-simulation approach

When a heat pipe is used as a cooling system for road vehicles, it is subject to acceleration which can adversely affect its thermal performance. In this study, we investigate the possibility of applying heat pipes for the cooling of power modules subject to time-varying power dissipation and time-dependent acceleration vectors whose projection along the heat pipe axis is up to 3g. The problem is tackled by modelling the heat pipe through a lumped parameter thermal network (LPTN). A numerical algorithm is used to solve the equations of LPTN representing the heat pipe. The code is then coupled with a 3D CFD solver (OpenFOAM) to perform a 1D/3D co-simulation and test the applicability of heat pipes as the cooling system in high-performance cars.