High performance titanium-water heat pipes for high temperature applications

During the last several years, high temperature heat pipes have been identified as enabling thermal control devices for several emerging applications. NASA's Prometheus initiative serves as a primary focus for much of the interest to expand thermal management capabilities to higher temperatures and increase the technology readiness level. Recently Swales and other investigators were tasked by NASA's Glenn Research Center (GRC) to design and fabricate several titanium-water heat pipes to satisfy the very challenging requirements associated with the Prometheus initiative. This program was successfully finished in March of 2006 and three high performance titanium-water development heat pipes were delivered to GRC. This paper describes the basic heat pipe design and its predicted performance capabilities. The manufacture and test of the heat pipes are also briefly discussed. Test results are discussed and compared to the existing hardware performance.