Effect of Target Wall Curvature on Heat Transfer and Pressure Loss From Jet Array Impingement

Abstract

Experiments to investigate the effect of target wall curvature on heat transfer and pressure loss from jet array impingement are performed. A jet plate configuration is studied with constant hole diameters and spacings. The geometry of the jet plate has streamwise jet spacings of 5.79 jet diameters, spanwise jet spacings of 4.49 jet diameters, and a jet-to-target plate distance of 3 jet diameters. For the curved case, the radius of the target plate is r/D = 31.57. A flat target wall setup with identical geometric spacing is also tested for direct comparison. Jet spacings were chosen such that validation and comparison can be made with open literature. For all configurations, spent air is drawn out in a single direction, which is tangential to the target plate curvature. Average jet Reynolds numbers ranging from 55,000 to 125,000 are tested. A steady-state measurement technique utilizing temperature-sensitive paint (TSP) is used on the target surface to obtain Nusselt number distributions. Pressure taps placed on the sidewall of the channel are used to evaluate the flow distribution in the impingement channel. Alongside the experimental work, CFD was performed utilizing the v2 − f turbulence model to better understand the relationship between the flow field and the heat transfer on the target surface. The main target of the current study is to quantify the impact of target wall radius and the decay of heat transfer after the impingement section, and to check the open literature correlations. It was found that the target wall curvature did not cause any significant changes in either the flow distribution or the heat transfer level. Comparisons with established correlations show similar level but different trends in heat transfer, potentially caused by differences in L/D. CFD results were able to show agreement in streamwise pitch-averaged Nusselt number levels with experimental results for the curved target plate at higher Re numbers.