Sintered aluminium heat pipe (SAHP)

This work is the product of an ongoing PhD project in the School of the Built and Natural Environment of Northumbria University in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and Thermacore Europe Ltd. The achievements at the end of the first year are summarized. The main objective of the project is to develop an aluminum ammonia heat pipe with a sintered wick structure. Currently available ammonia heat pipes mainly use extruded axially grooved aluminum tubes as a capillary wick. There have been a few attempts of employing porous steel or nickel wicks in steel tubes with ammonia as the working fluid (Bai, Lin et al. 2009)although it is a common practice in loop heat pipes but there is no report of aluminum-ammonia heat pipes porous aluminium wick structures. The main barrier is the difficulty of sintering aluminum powders to manufacture porous wicks. So far during this project promising sintered aluminum heat pipe samples have been manufactured using the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technique with various wick characteristics. This SLM method has proven to be capable of manufacturing very complicated wick structures with different thickness, porosity, permeability and pore sizes in different regions of a heat pipe. In addition the entire heat pipe including the end cap, outer tube wall, wick and the fill tube can be generated in a single process

Additive layer manufactured sinter-style aluminium/ammonia heat pipes

A novel heat pipe (HP) manufacturing method has been developed based on an additive layer manufacturing technique called “selective laser melting” or SLM. This innovation is expected to benefit current applications of aluminium/ammonia heat pipes in space and terrestrial projects as well as many new HP applications. The project was jointly sponsored by the Northumbria University and Thermacore, a world leading heat pipe manufacturing company in the UK, and formed the feasibility stage of a much larger program in Thermacore aiming to develop the next generation of HPs for space applications. In this project, sinter-style aluminium SLM HPs have been produced and tested to prove their functionality and to provide an overall image of the new production process with regard to the major involved parameters. During the project several properties of the new heat pipes e.g. wick porosity, permeability and pore size; wall density, hardness, vibration resistance and optimum SLM build parameters have also been determined by the existing or especially developed rigs in Thermacore or Northumbria University laboratories including scanning electronic microscope (SEM), vibration table, permeability measurement rig, etc. Converting the SLM products into functional heat pipes involves many other steps which have also been completed and explained. At the end of the project two successful functional samples were obtained and clear and precise answers were found to the project questions. SLM process was proved to be capable of producing functional heat pipes. Functional sinter-style heat pipes are proved to be producible by SLM. A numerical design tool is now available to evaluate SLM produced heat pipes and major challenges of this new HP production process including the density of the solid structures and possible contamination of the materials have been identified. Also a reasonably good overall image of this new HP production process and the new HPs has been provided in this project through the conducted measurements and experiments. The contribution of this project to knowledge is supported by two papers published in prestigious heat pipe journals and one paper presented in the 16th international heat pipe conference

The effect of passive music therapy on the quality of life of the elderly living in nursing homes in Tehran (a case study of nursing homes in Tehran)

Music therapy is the use of musical skills to improve physical, mental function and emotional-social reactions, to help develop motor, academic, communication, social and emotional abilities, and ultimately to improve the quality of life. The aim of this study was to investigate the difference in quality of life of the elderly aged 60 years and older living in 60 nursing homes in the two modes of receiving and not receiving inactive music therapy. The statistical population was 1800 people; The calculated sample size was calculated using Cochran's formula of 318 people and the questionnaires were distributed using simple cluster and random sampling method. Data collection tool is a standard 26-item quality of life questionnaire based on the Likert scale. The research method is methodologically quantitative and comparative. Findings indicate that the hypotheses about the difference in quality of life (Sig = 0.000), environmental health (Sig = 0.001), social relations (Sig = 0.011), physical health (Sig = 0.048), Mental health (Sig = 0.000) of the elderly has been confirmed in terms of receiving and not receiving inactive music therapy and the quality of life of elderly men is better than elderly women. Numerous music therapies such as playing music, singing, etc. can be taken to improve the physical and mental performance of the elderly to help increase their life expectancy and reduce mental illness

A novel method for manufacturing sintered aluminium heat pipes (SAHP)

This work is the product of an ongoing research project in the Faculty of Engineering and Environment of Northumbria University in collaboration with University of Liverpool and Thermacore of Ashington. This paper is a summary of the achievements at the midterm of the project. The main objective of the project is to develop an aluminium/ammonia heat pipe with a sintered wick structure. Currently available ammonia heat pipes mainly use extruded grooved aluminium tubes. There have been a small number of attempts of employing sintered steel or nickel wicks in steel tubes with ammonia as the working fluid [2] and [4] but this is the first paper to report on aluminium heat pipes with ammonia and a sintered wick structure. The main barrier is the difficulty of sintering aluminium powders to make sintered wicks. So far during this project promising sintered aluminium heat pipe samples have been manufactured using the Selective laser melting (SLM) technique with various wick characteristics. This new method has proved to be capable of producing very complicated wick structures with different thickness, porosity, permeability and pore sizes in different regions of a heat pipe in addition to the solid (nonporous) walls while the entire heat pipe including the end cap, wall, wick and the fill tube can be produced in a single process