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

The current trends toward the greater functionality of electronic devices are resulting in a steady increase in the amount of heat dissipated from electronic components. Forced channel flow is frequently used to remove heat at the walls of the channel where a PCB with a few high heat dissipating components is located. The overall cooling strategy thus must not only match the overall power dissipation load, but also address the requirements of the “hot” components. In order to cool the thermal load with forced channel flow, excessive flow rates will be required. The objective of this study is to investigate if targeted cooling systems, i.e., an impinging jet in combination with a low velocity channel flow, can improve the thermal performance of the system. The steady-state three-dimensional (3-D) model is developed with the Reynolds-Stress-Model (RSM) as a 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 is validated against experimental data obtained from three well-known cases, two cases with an impinging jet on a flat heated plate, and one case with a heated cube in a single channel flow. The effects of the jet Re and jet to-cross-flow velocity ratio are investigated. The airflow pattern around the cube and the surface temperature of the cube as well as the mean values and local distributions of the heat transfer coefficient are presented.