Sintered Metal Wicks Development for the High Performance Loop Heat Pipe(LHP) Systems

The Loop Heat Pipe(LHP) system uses capillary forces so as to pump the working fluid from heat acquisition to heat rejecting systems. The performance of the LHP systems depends mainly upon the operating performance of the wick structure. The capillary pressure increases with decreasing the pore size of the wick structure. By the way, the wick structure's permeability decreases with decreasing the pore size and the porosity. To obtain an ideal wick, the wick structure should possess several characteristics such as the small pore size, high porosity and chemical compatibility with working fluid. Sintered metal wicks have been mainly used as the capillary wick structure mounted in LHP because of the fact that the sintered metal wick has some advantages like convenient selection of wick material, smaller pore size and so on as well as high reliability. In this study, sintered metal wicks were developed to meet required several parameters to design the high performance LHP systems for obtaining even more effective cooling technologies.