Innovative Wickless Heat Pipe Systems for Ground and Space Applications - INWIP

Marengo, Marco and Georgoulas, Anastasios and Miche, Nicolas and Andredaki, Manolia and Pietrasanta, Luca and Mangini, Daniele and Mameli, Mauro and Araneo, Lucio and Filippeschi, Sauro (2021) Innovative Wickless Heat Pipe Systems for Ground and Space Applications - INWIP. [Data Collection]

Project Description

The project aims at designing innovative wickless heat pipes with enhanced performances and reliability for solving different industrial thermal management problems on ground and in space by using advanced working fluids, materials and optimized geometries and heat flux boundary conditions. The research will be both experimental and numerical. Wickless Hybrid ThermoSyphons (TS), Grooved Heat Pipes (GHP) and Pulsating Heat Pipes (PHP) will be investigated, improved and newly designed. For the different principles, heat pipes with different shapes and different materials will be considered. In addition, working fluids with potential applications in the low temperature (below 100°C) and high temperature (above 100°C) regimes will be analysed, and particular attention will be dedicated to dilute alcohol aqueous mixtures with special surface tension and wetting properties (self-rewetting fluids). A comparison between experimental data and numerical results will be carried on. Also a comparison among different numerical approaches will be considered in order to define the best design method for this kind of wickless heat pipes. In addition to ground research activities, experimental work is foreseen onboard parabolic flight airplanes offering microgravity and hypergravity conditions and onboard sounding rockets for longer milligravity experiments. A further aim of the research is the preparation of systematic experimentation on the Thermal Platform1 TP1 on board the International Space Station (ISS), investigating particular GHP and PHP with ordinary and Self-Rewetting working Fluids (SRF). The team of scientists is highly specialized in the field and will assure that all the test cases will be accomplished. Three main partners will be responsible for the development of the three technologies (TS, GHP, PHP) and other seven scientific partners will contribute with parallel research, mostly self-financed. Five industries are involved in the project, with an in-kind contribution, since interested to the final applications of such thermal devices both for ground and space developments. Moreover, six are the international partners from Brasil, Japan, India, Russia. A great effort will be given for the coordination and integration of the research groups and industrial partners.