  Proper heat transfer management is important to key electronic components in
microelectronic applications. Pulsating heat pipes (PHP) can be an efficient
solution to such heat transfer problems. However, mathematical modelling of a
PHP system is still very challenging, due to the complexity and multiphysics
nature of the system. In this work, we present a simplified, two-phase heat
transfer model, and our analysis shows that it can make good predictions about
startup characteristics. Furthermore, by considering parameter estimation as a
nonlinear constrained optimization problem, we have used the firefly algorithm
to find parameter estimates efficiently. We have also demonstrated that it is
possible to obtain good estimates of key parameters using very limited
experimental data.
