A New Correlation for Pressure Drop in Arrays of Rectangular Blocks in Air-Cooled Electronic Units

Abstract

An experimental work is carried out to investigate the pressure drop and to visualize the flow field in the entrance region of an array of rectangular modules attached to the lower wall of a duct. The modules are positioned in an in-line arrangement to simulate the geometry often encountered in the cooling passages of electronic units. The investigation is performed in both laminar and turbulent regions with Reynolds number ranging from 400 to 15,000. The geometric parameters range from H/L = 0.125 to 1.5 and S/L = 0.125 to 0.5, while the value of B/L is fixed to 0.5. The flow visualization revealed a highly separated region on the first module of the array. The pressure drops are correlated for the range of Re, H/L, and S/L employed in this work.