Patent Application
20060213646
The present invention relates in general to a wick structure of a heat pipe, and more particularly, to a wick structure with enhanced capillary action to a heat pipe.
There are lots of device used for transferring heat in the industry. A heat pipe is widely in the form of a tube with one closed end and one open end. A wick structure is installed in the heat pipe and a working fluid is introduced into the heat pipe, followed by the process of sealing the open end. When the heat pipe is in contact with the electronic products, the heat absorbing end absorbs the heat from the electronic products, such that a phase transition from the liquid state to the gas state occurs to the working fluid. After flowing to the cooling end of the heat pipe, the gaseous working fluid is then condensed back to the liquid state and re-flows back to the heat absorbing end by the capillary effect provided by the wick structure. Therefore, the circulation and phase transition of the working fluid irritated in the heat pipe provides enhanced heat dissipation performance, such that the electronic product can always operate under a uniform and working temperature. Meanwhile, in order to enhance the capillary and transporting abilities of the wick structure, a multi-layer wick structure is used.
However, the multi-layer wick structure costs much more and may have the problem being curled to put inside a tubular member of the heat pipe. The curled wick structure may not reliably attach to the interior surface of the tubular member and may collapse during the sintering. Moreover, if the heat pipe is curved, due to each layer of the wick structures is different, the multi-layer wick may peel from each other.
Thus, there still is a need in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.
The present invention provides a wick structure of a heat pipe. The wick structure is a one-layer woven wick. The meshes of the woven wick are not formed in one-to-one fiber woven together. In stead, at least one weaving direction of the meshes contains a plurality of fiber bundles each including two more woven fibers to weave to a plurality of single fiber. That is, if the meshes are formed by a plurality of orthogonal transversal fibers and longitudinal fibers, preferably, the fibers in the longitudinal direction are formed in bundles each to weave to the single fiber in the transversal direction. As such, the fiber bundles of the one-layer woven wick can provide enhanced capillary force like a multi-layer wick structure.
Accordingly, the heat pipe of the present invention includes a tubular member and a wick structure attached to an interior surface of the tubular member. The wick structure is a woven wick with meshes formed by a plurality of fibers, at least one weaving direction of the meshes contains a plurality of fiber bundles including two more weaving fibers each to weave to a single fiber.
These and other objectives of the present invention will become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of preferred embodiments.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary, and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
These as well as other features of the present invention will become more apparent upon reference to the drawings therein:
Reference will now be made in detail to the preferred embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers are used in the drawings and the description to refer to the same or like parts.
Please refer to
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Furthermore, the fiber bundle 110 can be formed by twisting the fibers 1100 together. The sizes of the fiber 1100 and the single fiber 111 can be different, and/or the sizes of the fiber 1100 themselves can be different also.
Finally, the heat pipe 1 further includes a support member 12 for pressing the wick structure firmly attached to the tubular member 10, and/or providing extra capillary force to the heat pipe 1. The support member 12 can be formed by having a mesh structure, a spiral structure and a plurality of holes formed thereon.
This disclosure provides exemplary embodiments of wick structure of a heat pipe. The scope of this disclosure is not limited by these exemplary embodiments. Numerous variations, whether explicitly provided for by the specification or implied by the specification, such as variations in shape, structure, dimension, type of material or manufacturing process may be implemented by one of skill in the art in view of this disclosure.
