Procedures for measuring the properties of heat-pipe wick materials

Accurate measurements of wick properties must be available to design high-performance beat pipes and to properly interpret results from heat pipe tests. In a program that is aimed at developing heat-pipe receivers for solar-Stirling electric systems, we have recently explored procedures to measure the effective pore radius and permeability of wick materials in their final ``as fabricated`` condition. Measurement techniques are compared in this paper and problems that are frequently encountered in measuring wick properties are discussed.