Opportunities in Jet-Impingement Cooling for Gas-Turbine Engines

Impingement heat transfer is considered one of the most effective cooling technologies that yield high localized convective heat transfer coefficients. This paper studies different configurable parameters involved in jet impingement cooling such as, exit orifice shape, crossflow regulation, target surface modification, spent air reuse, impingement channel modification, jet pulsation, and other techniques to understand which of them are critical and how these heat-transfer-enhancement concepts work. The aim of this paper is to excite the thermal sciences community of this efficient cooling technique and instill some thoughts for future innovations. New orifice shapes are becoming feasible due to innovative 3D printing technologies. However, the orifice shape variations show that it is hard to beat a sharp-edged round orifice in heat transfer coefficient, but it comes with a higher pressure drop across the orifice. Any attempt to streamline the hole shape indicated a drop in the Nusselt number, thus giving the designer some control over thermal budgeting of a component. Reduction in crossflow has been attempted with channel modifications. The use of high-porosity conductive foam in the impingement space has shown marked improvement in heat transfer performance. A list of possible research topics based on this discussion is provided in the conclusion.

Nanoliquid jet impingement heat transfer for a phase change material (PCM) embedded radial heating system

Nanoliquid impingement heat transfer with phase change material (PCM) installed radial system is considered. Study is performed by using finite element method for various values of Reynolds numbers (100 ≤ Re ≤ 300), height of PCM (0.25H ≤ hpcm = 0.7H ≤ 0.75H) and plate spacing (0.15H ≤ hpcm = 0.7H ≤ 0.40H). Different configurations with using water, nanoliquid and nanoliquid+PCM are compared in terms of heat transfer improvement. Thermal performance is improved by using PCM while best performance is achieved with nanoliquid and PCM installed configuration. At Re=100 and Re=300, heat transfer improvements of 26% and 25.5% are achieved with nanoliquid+PCM system as compared to water without PCM. Height of the PCM layer also influences the heat transfer dynamic behavior while there is 12.6% variation in the spatial average heat transfer of the target surface with the lowest and highest PCM height while discharging time increases by about 76.5%. As the spacing between the plates decreases, average heat transfer rises and there is 38% variation.

Effects of Vortex Generators on the Impingement Jet Arrays Heat Transfer

In the jets array cooling system of the gas turbine, the downstream jets will be deflected by the crossflow and the heat transfer in the downstream will be suppressed. In this paper, the rectangular vortex generators are arranged in the jet arrays to enhance the jet impingement heat transfer. Through the numerical simulations, the configuration of rectangular vortex generators (Common-flow-down CFD and Common-flow-up CFU) and the relative position (l2) between the impingements and the rectangular vortex generators are studied. The results show that both of configurations are beneficial to the suppression of the crossflow and enhance the heat transfer in the downstream. The maximum enhancement of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers in CFD-VGs configuration can reach up to 9.09% with lower than 5% increase of the pressure loss and that in CFU-VGs configuration can reach up to 10.8% with lower than 4.8% increase of the pressure loss. From the perspective of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers and the overall thermal efficiency, the CFD-VGs with l2 = 0 has the best performance. However, from the perspective of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers, the CFU-VGs with l2 = 0 has the best performance, while from the perspective of the overall thermal efficiency, the CFU-VGs with l2 = 3 has the best performance.

Impingement Heat Transfer Innovations and Enhancements: a Discussion on Selected Geometrical Features

Impingement heat transfer is considered as one of the most effective cooling technologies that yields in high localized convective heat transfer coefficient. This paper studies different configurational parameters involved in jet impingement cooling such as, exit orifice shape, crossflow regulation, target surface modification, spent air reuse, impingement channel modification, jet pulsation, and other techniques to understand what are critical and how these heat transfer enhancement concepts work. These enhancement factors have been explored in detail by many researchers, including standard parameters such as normalized distance between adjacent jets and jet-to-target spacing, and those known benefits are not repeated here. The aim of this paper is to stimulate the current scientific knowledge of this efficient cooling technique and instill some thoughts for future innovations. New orifice shapes are becoming feasible due to 3D printing technologies. However, the orifice studies show that it is hard to beat a sharp-edged round orifice. Any attempt to streamline the hole shape indicated a drop in the Nusselt number. Reduction in crossflow has been attempted with channel modifications. Use of high porosity conductive foam in the impingement space has shown marked improvement in heat transfer performance. A list of possible research topics based on this discussion are provided in conclusion.