Next Generation Loop Heat Pipe wick technology for thermal management of Space and Terrestrial applications

This project aims to gain an overall understanding and improvement of LHP technology and to design and develop several functional units for testing. The purpose of manufacturing a novel designs of LHP is to demonstrate the technology's reliability and flexibility for use in many thermal control applications, and in particular devices operating in space, aerospace, medical/test equipment and satellite sectors. The results from testing each unit will be use as stepping stone for development of much smaller and more efficient designs. Those activities are considered to achieve the above mentioned objectivities:
* Establish a set of designs requirements;
* Comprehensive review of the passive systems for cooling of devices working in space and terrestrial applications using heat pipes and state-of-art of novel heat pipes wick designs;
* Develop procedures for component selection, manufacturing, cleaning, assembly, evacuation and charging;
* Equip the LHP laboratory with capabilities for fabrication and testing;
* Tailoring of wick properties and construction of new wick profiles (e.g. non circular) leading to establish new high performance design of LHP;
* Investigation of next generation of wicking materials and designs using advanced manufacturing method (e.g. selective laser melting/additive manufacture and micro-fibre wick sintering);
* Characterisation of structure of novel wick material and measurement of porosity, permeability, pore radius, capillary height basing on bubble point test and/or imagining techniques;
* Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of fluid flow through proposed wick structure;
* Construction of novel heat exchanger on the basis of Loop Heat Pipe;
* Testing the prototype of heat exchanger;
* Identify key areas of concerns to be addressed through performance testing;
* Develop a novel mathematical models to estimate working fluid properties, and calculate fluid inventory and compensation chamber sizing;
* Develop a novel mathematical models that simulates a LHP properties;
* Experimental verification of the data obtained during the LHP test and comparison them with the data from the literature;
* Compare the test results with previous investigations regarding LHPs;
* Compare the mathematical model with previous models available at the literature;
* Writing a technical documentation of heat exchanger;
* Writing a thesis;