Heats pipes for temperature homogenization: A literature review

Heat pipes offer high effective heat transfer in a purely passive way. Other specific properties of heat pipes, like temperature homogenization, can be also reached. In this paper, a literature review is carried out in order to investigate the existing heat pipe systems mainly aiming the reduction of temperature gradients. The review gathering more than sixty references is sorted into various application fields, like thermal management of electronics, of storage vessels or of satellites, for which the management of the temperature uniformity differs by the isothermal surface area, temperature ranges or the targeted precision of the temperature flattening. A summary of heat pipe characteristics for this function of temperature homogenization is then performed to identify their specificities, compared to other applications of heat pipes. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.