To investigate the workpiece curvature influence on groove deformation,numerical studies with curvature varying from negative to positive were conducted on copper material.Groove deformations were analyzed,including groove geometry,effective stress distribution and plough force.The curled groove shape whose workpiece curvature was 0.133 mm-1 was validated by experiments.Moreover,a series of geometry models with various curvatures were introduced to analyze the change of groove deformation.The results show that positive curvatures influence groove deformation more intensively than negative or zero curvature.It is mainly due to the action of the tool forming face during plough process.
A rotary swaging machine was applied to fabricating pipe reduction for miniature inner grooved copper tube （MIGCT） heat pipes. Compared with conventional swaging method, the axial feed of the designed rotary swaging machine was reached by a constant pushing force. The deformation of grooves in pipe reduced section during rotary swaging was analyzed. The shrinkage and extensibility of pipe reduction were measured and calculated. Furthermore, four aspects, including outer diameter, surface roughness, extensibility and processing time of pipe reduction, which were influenced by the pushing force, were considered. The results show that the tube wall thickness increases gradually along the z-axis at sinking section. However, the outer diameters, surface roughness and micro-cracks at reduced section tend to decrease along the z-axis. Besides, the effect of variation in the pushing force on the extensibility is limited while an increase in the pushing force results in a decrease of surface roughness. Therefore, a large pushing force within the limit is beneficial to pipe reduction manufacturing during rotary swaging process.
In order to improve the capillary force of grooved wick, a novel skew-grooved wick structure was proposed for micro heat pipes. Risen meniscus experiments were carried out to research the capillary force of the skew-grooved and rectangle-grooved wick and a comparison of capillarity between the two wick structures was explored. A theoretical capillary force model of skew-grooved wick structure was also developed to calculate its effective capillary radius by comparing with the rectangle-grooved wick. From the experimental results, the maximum capillary force of the skewed-grooved wick is 8.62% larger than that of the rectangle-grooved wick. From the theoretical analysis, because the skewed-grooved wick has a smaller effective capillary radius, its maximum capillary force is 8.64% larger than that of the rectangle-grooved wick. The results indicate that the skew-grooved wick provides larger capillary force than the rectangle-grooved wick.
