Highly efficient heat dissipation method of grooved heat pipe for thermal behavior regulation for spindle system working in low rotational speed

Considerable quantities of heat generated by thermal sources in the spindle system severely affect the machining precision of the overall machine tool. Traditional cooling methods cannot fully meet the demand for highly efficient heat dissipation, leading to significant and dynamic thermal error. To address the above challenges, a grooved heat pipe with 6 mm diameter, 340 mm length is developed to minimize temperature rise and thermal error under complex operational conditions involving rotation. A two-phase computational fluid dynamics model of the grooved heat pipe under rotation is constructed. The function relationship between groove number (0−100), filling ratio (80–120 %), heating power (5–40 W), rotational speed (0–300 r/min), and airflow velocity (0–6.5 m/s) and convective coefficient is elucidated by the response surface method and the optimal response result is determined. Results demonstrate that the overall temperature and thermal error with grooved heat pipe are reduced by 5.4 % and 28.6 %, respectively. Maximum temperature and thermal error of the shaft core integrated grooved heat pipe are decreased by 7.2 % and 32.4 %, respectively. The designed grooved heat pipe is much more effective than the sintered-core and rotating heat pipes and then can provide a reference for heat dissipation.