Investigation of Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop of an Impinging Jet in a Cross-Flow for Cooling of a Heated Cube

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the thermal performance and the cost measured in pressure drops of a targeted cooling system with use of an impinging jet in combination with a low-velocity channel flow on a heated wall-mounted cube. The effects of the Reynolds numbers of the impinging jet and the cross-flow, as well as the distance between the top and bottom plates, are investigated. A steady-state 3D computational fluid dynamics model was developed with use of a Reynolds stress model as turbulence model. The geometrical case is a channel with a heated cube in the middle of the base plate and two inlets, one horizontal channel flow and one vertical impinging jet. The numerical model was validated against experimental data with a similar geometrical setup. The velocity field was measured by particle image velocimetry and the surface temperature was measured by an infrared imaging system. This case results in a very complex flow structure where several flow-related phenomena influence the heat transfer rate and the pressure drops. The average heat transfer coefficients on each side of the cube and the pressure loss coefficients are presented; correlations for the average heat transfer coefficient on the cube and the pressure loss coefficients are created.