Temperature Control of a Target Plate under Variable Flow of Impinging Air from an Orifice

Abstract

This work concerns with experimental and numerical study for the cooling characteristics of a target plate under the effect of air impingement from orifice of different sizes D of (5,10,15 and 20 mm). A centrifugal blower was used for air impinging with jet velocity in the range (18-40 m/s). Tested Reynolds number Re is in the range of (7100-44400) with orifice to plate spacing ratio H/D of (2,4,6,8). Numerical analysis using CFD commercial code Fluent version 14.5 with K-ε RNG turbulence model has been used to simulate the flow and heat transfer in impingement jet. Both numerical and experimental results are analyzed to determine the effect of using different orifice sizes on heat transfer rates and flow structure on the target plate. A correlation is obtained for the stagnation Nusselt number as a function of Re and H/D. Optimum heat removal rate are found to occur at H/D=6. According to the experimental results which indicates that orifice diameter and jet velocity are the most effective variables which characterize the heat removal rate, a control system is designed and constructed to vary the orifice diameter in order to control the air flow rate and the plate temperature. Fixing the optimum H/D and for the used blower characteristics the control system is tested and the results show a good response for the control system for different operation conditions so that the cooling rates are increased for the heated plate.

Keywords

• impingement jet
• flat plate
• cooling
• numerical simulation
• temperature control