Tests on a sodium/Hastelloy X wing leading edge heat pipe for hypersonic vehicles

A full-scale, internally instrumented, sodium/Hastelloy X heat pipe was designed and fabricated for the wing leading edge of an advanced reentry vehicle. A computer model was developed to predict the heat pipe startup. The heat pipe was tested, and the results were used to validate the startup methodologies. In addition, valuable fabrication and test procedure lessons were learned.