Manufacture and performance tests of the loop heat pipe evaporator

In this paper, a nickel wick was manufactured, and its basic performance such as porosity, permeability and effective pore radius were tested. The test results show that the nickel wick has comparatively large porosity and small effective pore radius, which satisfy the research and development requirements. The two key problems in manufacturing the loop heat pipe evaporator i.e. seal and contact were solved by trial, and the evaporator was manufactured and its performance was tested. The experimental results show that the loop heat pipe can start up reliably, and behave well in the thermal load increment tests, indicating that the manufacture method of the loop heat pipe evaporator proposed in this paper is feasible and valid.