Effect of Nozzle-to-Target Spacing on Fin Effectiveness and Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient for Array Jet Impingement Onto Novel Micro-Roughness Structures

With recent advancements in the field of additive manufacturing, the design domain for development of complicated cooling configurations has significantly expanded. The motivation of the present study is to develop high-performance impingement cooling designs catered towards application’s requiring high rates of heat removal, e.g. gas turbine blade leading edge and double-wall cooling, air-cooled electronic devices etc. Jet impingement is a popular cooling technique which results in high convective heat rates. In the present study, jet impingement is combined with strategic roughening of the target surface, such that a combined effect of impingement-based and curved-surface area based enhancement in heat transfer coefficient could be achieved. Traditionally, for surface roughening, cylindrical and cubic elements are used. We have demonstrated, through our steady-state experiments, a novel “concentric” shaped roughness element design which has resulted in about 20–60% higher effectiveness compared to smooth target jet impingement, for jet-to-target spacing of one jet diameter. The cubic shaped roughened target yielded about 20% to 40% enhancement in effectiveness, and the cylindrical shaped roughened target yielded 10% to 30% enhancement. Through the plenum pressure measurements, it was found that the addition of the micro-roughness elements does not result in a discernable increment in pressure losses, compared to the standard impingement on the smooth target surface. Hence, the demonstrated configuration with the highest heat transfer coefficient also resulted in the highest thermal hydraulic performance.