Design of heat pipe cooled laser mirrors with an inverted meniscus evaporator wick
Abstract
The heat pipe laser mirror is cooled by evaporation of a liquid from a porous wick on the backside of the mirror. The liquid is distributed over the surface by the capillary wick, eliminating the need for a liquid pump, piping, heat exchanger, and pumping power. Thus the heat pipe cooled mirror can be particularly valuable where compact, light weight, high heat flux mirrors are required. In this report an analysis of the hydrodynamic performance limits of a flat plate heat pipe evaporator is described. A thin copper plate is heated on one side and cooled on the other by evaporation of water from fine grooves fed by a liquid transport wick. This type of evaporator wick is known as the inverted-meniscus heat pipe evaporator. The analysis includes determination of the wicking limit for three composite wick designs and gives the optimum wick dimensions.
- Publication:
-
AIAA, Aerospace Sciences Meeting
- Pub Date:
- January 1980
- Bibcode:
- 1980aiaa.meetS....F
- Keywords:
-
- Cooling Systems;
- Heat Pipes;
- Laser Heating;
- Lasers;
- Mirrors;
- Evaporation;
- Hydrodynamic Equations;
- Laser Outputs;
- Menisci;
- Wicks;
- Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer