Kappe Konstantin, Bihler Michael, Morawietz Katharina, Hügenell Philipp P C, Pfaff Aron, Hoschke Klaus
Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics (EMI), Ernst-Zermelo-Str. 4, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), Heidenhofstraße 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany.
Materials (Basel). 2022 Dec 14;15(24):8930. doi: 10.3390/ma15248930.
Additive manufacturing offers a wide range of possibilities for the design and optimization of lightweight and application-tailored structures. The great design freedom of the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) manufacturing process enables new design and production concepts for heat pipes and their internal wick structures, using various metallic materials. This allows an increase in heat pipe performance and a direct integration into complex load-bearing structures. An important influencing factor on the heat pipe performance is the internal wick structures. The complex and filigree geometry of such structures is challenging in regards to providing high manufacturing quality at a small scale and varying orientations during the printing process. In this work, new wick concepts have been developed, where the design was either determined by the geometrical parameters, the process parameters, or their combination. The wick samples were additively manufactured with LPBF technology using the lightweight aluminum alloy Scalmalloy. The influence of the process parameters, geometrical design, and printing direction was investigated by optical microscopy, and the characteristic wick performance parameters were determined by porosimetry and rate-of-rise measurements. They showed promising results for various novel wick concepts and indicated that additive manufacturing could be a powerful manufacturing method to further increase the performance and flexibility of heat pipes.
增材制造为轻量化和定制化结构的设计与优化提供了广泛的可能性。激光粉末床熔融(LPBF)制造工艺具有极大的设计自由度,能够利用各种金属材料为热管及其内部毛细结构带来新的设计和生产理念。这使得热管性能得以提升,并能直接集成到复杂的承重结构中。内部毛细结构是影响热管性能的一个重要因素。此类结构复杂且精细,在小规模制造以及打印过程中不同方向上保证高制造质量颇具挑战性。在这项工作中,开发了新的毛细结构概念,其设计由几何参数、工艺参数或二者的组合决定。毛细结构样品采用LPBF技术,使用轻质铝合金Scalmalloy进行增材制造。通过光学显微镜研究了工艺参数、几何设计和打印方向的影响,并通过孔隙率测定法和升温速率测量确定了毛细结构的特征性能参数。对于各种新颖的毛细结构概念,研究结果显示出良好的前景,表明增材制造可能是一种强有力的制造方法,可进一步提高热管的性能和灵活性。