Heat Transfer Investigations in Multiple Impinging Jets at Low Reynolds Number

Abstract

Jet impingement is a well established cooling methodology used for cooling turbine blades in gas turbine engines. Jet impingement results in high heat transfer coefficients as compared to other conventional modes of single phase heat transfer. Most of the research in jet impingement has been confined to high Reynolds number regime. In order to increase the applicability of this technique to non conventional applications like in a low pressure micro turbine combustors or turbine blades, the behavior of such systems in the low Reynolds number regime should be understood. The present paper is a continuation of earlier investigations on the heat transfer behavior of a large jet impingement array in the low Reynolds number regime, especially in the laminar and transitional region. More experiments have been conducted with different geometrical parameters of the array to analyze the effect of these parameters on the average heat transfer coefficient. Numerical simulations with existing CFD tools were carried out in order to understand the fluid mechanics inside such a complex system. The CFD model was validated with the experiments. Different turbulence models were used and it was found that the SST-k-ω model was the best for modeling jet impingement phenomena. It is anticipated that the results obtained from the present exercise will give better insights in optimizing the design of multiple jet impingement cooling systems for high heat density applications.