Abstract
In the present study, cylindrical lattice structures of 20 × 40 mm2 (i.e., sample diameter and height, respectively) were fabricated from Maraging Steel (EOS MS1) using the Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) technique. The lattice structures were designed and fabricated for three different cell topologies, including body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, and octet truss, with pore opening sizes ranging from 200μm to 1600μm. The present study also experimentally investigates and compares the capillary performance of the printed wick structures, accompanied with characterizing the key porous parameters such as pore size, porosity, permeability, and lattice structures at microscopic scales. Capillary experiments were executed by a rate-of-rise technique to present capillary elevations versus time using methanol as the candidate working fluid of choice with desired merit number to be employed for passive two-phase heat transfer devices for thermal management systems in space applications. Due to the difficulty in locating the meniscus front in lattice structures leading to unreliable data, this work not only takes advantage of an infrared (IR) camera to properly distinguish the front location but also measures the changes in liquid mass wicked into the lattice samples over time, which is another adaptation to the classical capillary rate-of-rise tests.
