Structural, Thermophysical and Mechanical Characteristics of Metal Felt Wicks of Modern Heat Pipes

The article reflects the results of many years’ (since 1972) research of structural, hydrodynamic, thermophysical and mechanical properties of metal felt capillary structures (MFCS) of heat pipes (HP). These structures were made from the discrete copper, stainless steel, or nickel sintered fibres of 0.002 to 0.01-m length and diameter within 20 to 70 μm. They were intended for the HP with shells of a copper, stainless steel, nickel, titan, nickel silver, and ceramics and filled with such heat carriers as nitrogen, ammonia, water, ethanol, methanol, acetone, sodium, etc. The HP worked in the range of temperatures from cryogenic level (-190 С) to high temperatures (+800 С). Analytical and experimental research is executed by the authors from National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (Kyiv, Ukraine) supervised by Dr., Prof. M. Semena. On the basis of the conducted research the functional dependences are obtained for implementation into engineering calculations of heat-transfer characteristics of HP. The proposed design of rational HP with MFCS and elaborated technology of their fabrication made it possible to create and implement a variety of the heat pipes and systems on their basis for different fields of application.