Experimental and numerical studies simulating the gas-cooled divertor plate design concept have been carried out. While thermo-fluid and thermo-mechanical analyses have been previously performed to show the feasibility of the divertor plate design and its ability to accommodate a maximum heat flux of up to 10 MW/m2, no experimental data have heretofore been published to support or validate such analyses. To that end, this investigation has been undertaken. A test module with prototypical cross-sectional geometry has been designed, constructed, and instrumented. Experiments spanning the prototypical Reynolds numbers of the helium-cooled divertor have been conducted using pressurized air as the coolant. A second test module where the planar jet exiting the inlet manifold is replaced by a two-dimensional hexagonal array of circular jets over the entire top surface of the inlet manifold has also been tested. The thermal performance of both test modules with and without a porous metallic foam layer in the gap between the outer surface of the inlet manifold and the cooled surfaces of the pressure boundary were directly compared. For a given mass flow rate, the slot design with the metallic foam insert showed the highest heat transfer coefficient, with a pressure drop lower than that of the array of circular jets without foam. Additionally, numerical simulations matching the experimental operating conditions for the two cases without foam were performed using the computational fluid dynamics software package, FLUENT® v6.2. Comparisons of the experimental and numerical pressure drop, temperature, and heat transfer coefficient were made.

<p>Two-phase jet impingement combines the latent heat absorbed by boiling heat transfer with the strong forced convection of an impinging jet. It is a compact and highly effective heat transfer method that is capable of high heat transfer coefficients and high boiling critical heat flux limits. This makes it a suitable technology for electronics immersion cooling applications when configured as a submerged jet of a dielectric coolant. Previous studies have focused on the heat-flux-controlled nucleate boiling performance of an impingement jet up to the critical heat flux. Exploration of other boiling regimes that occur under temperature-controlled surfaces is of fundamental importance to fully understand the design space. It has been shown for free jets that a high and consistent heat flux can be dissipated over a wide range of surface superheats in the transition boiling regime when the surface is temperature-controlled. This effect is strongest in the stagnation zone, directly beneath the jet. Literature that studies this so-called “shoulder effect”, or heat flux shoulder, is scarce and almost completely focused on applications in metals processing using free jets of water as the coolant. It has been hypothesized previously that the impinging subcooled liquid delays and disrupts the start of film boiling, thereby dissipating heat flux levels comparable to that during nucleate boiling. To exploit operation in this unique transition boiling regime for potential applications in immersion cooling of electronics, the occurrence of this shoulder effect, as well as means for estimating the shoulder heat flux across different operating conditions, must be investigated for submerged jets and dielectric coolants. </p> <p>In this work, temperature-controlled submerged jet impingement is experimentally characterized using HFE-7100. A copper heater sized to be completely covered by the jet stagnation zone is increased in surface temperature throughout the transition boiling regime via a PID controller, which allows for steady-state temperature-controlled data to be acquired in this regime. The boiling curves, including critical heat flux and shoulder heat flux, are measured for jet velocities from 0.5-3 m/s and inlet subcooling from 5-30 K. The shoulder effect is shown to exist in these conditions. High-speed imaging is used to relate the flow behavior to the boiling thermal measurements and shows that the shoulder heat flux effect is an enhanced film heat transfer in the film-like mode of transition boiling. Trends and dependencies on inlet subcooling and jet velocity are measured and used to assess available predictive tools. It is observed that there is a proportionality between the critical heat flux and the shoulder heat flux. This implies a mechanistic similarity between the two effects. With further data to correlate, this similarity can potentially be used to predict the shoulder heat flux leveraging existing correlations for the critical heat flux, widening the design space of two-phase jet impingement systems. </p>

Characterization of local boiling trends, in addition to the typically reported area-averaged trends, is essential for the robust design and implementation of phase change technologies to sensitive heat transfer applications such as electronics cooling. Obtaining the values of heat fluxes corresponding to locally varying surface temperatures has been a challenge limiting most investigations to area-averaged results. This thesis illustrates the importance of a spatially local heat transfer analysis during boiling. Pool and submerged jet impingement boiling scenarios on a silicon surface are considered at the macroscale (27.5 mm heater with multiple nucleation sites) and microscale (1000 ��m heater for isolated bubble generation), by the use of two thin film serpentine heater geometries. The macroscale heater highlights the effect of spatial variations in imposed heat flux on boiling heat transfer with a circumferentially uniform but radially non-uniform heat flux distribution. The microscale heater simulates a local hot-spot for spot cooling on an electronic device. Spatial variation in boiling heat transfer and bubble dynamics with and without a jet flow are documented using thin film voltage sensors along with qualitative and quantitative high speed imaging and infra-red thermography. Unique to this study is the documentation of local boiling curves for different radial locations on the heat transfer surface and their comparison with the corresponding area-averaged representations. It is shown here that sectionally averaged representations of boiling curves over regions of like-imposed heat flux can substantially simplify the interpretation of data while retaining important information of the local variations in heat transfer. The radial influence of the convective jet flow on the bubble dynamics and boiling heat transfer is assessed for a single circular submerged jet configuration. Varied parameters include jet exit Reynolds numbers, nozzle geometry, test fluid (deionized water and FC-72), fluid subcooling and the supplied heat flux. Distinct modifications of the surface temperature distribution imposed by the impinging jet flow are highlighted by comparing radial temperature profiles during pool and jet impingement boiling. It is demonstrated that in contrast with pool boiling, thermal overshoots during jet impingement boiling for a highly wetting fluid like FC-72 are highest in regions farthest from the impingement point. The effect of jet inertia on bubble departure characteristics are compared with pool boiling under subcooled conditions for FC-72. Qualitative high speed visualization indicates the presence of two modes of bubble generation during jet impingement boiling (a) bubble departure from the surface and (b) bubble separation from the source resulting in sliding bubbles over the surface. The effect of jet flow on bubble entrainment is depicted. Quantitative results indicate that in general departure diameters for pool and jet impingement boiling increase and plateau at a maximum value with increasing power input while no notable trends were observed in the corresponding departure frequencies. The largest departure diameters for jet impingement boiling at fixed fluid subcoolings of 10��C and 20��C were found to be smaller than that for the corresponding pool boiling test by a factor of 1.6 and 2.3, respectively. / Graduation date: 2013

A systematic research on aeroacoustics conducted around the world for the last few decades has revealed various inherent characteristics of the jet noise radiation. However, a lot more needs to be done for the theoretical as well as experimental predictions of various jet noise features based on actual flow details. The work reported in the present thesis is an attempt in this direction. A critical study of existing literature on jet noise shows that none of the general wave equations lends itself easily for predictions of all the jet noise features. It is shown that while LighthilPs classical acoustic analogy approach, with some reasonable approximations, can be used to yield most of the information needed by the engineers, the convected wave equations of Phillips and Lilley are required to study the acoustic radiation in what has come to be known as "Refraction valley" or "Cone of relative silence". The characteristics of the sound field of underexpanded cold jet impingement flows were studied by measuring the noise emanating from two convergent nozzles of throat diameter 2.5 mm and 5 mm each and a convergent - divergent nozzle of exit diameter of 6.49 mm, when the jet impinges on a flat plate kept perpendicular to the direction of the jet. The measurements were conducted upstream of the nozzle over an extensive envelope of jet operating conditions such as chamber stagnation pressure, mass flow rate through the nozzle and diameter of the nozzle. The source strength at the jet boundary was obtained by measuring acoustic pressure amplitude close to the jet contour assuming it as locally cylindrical. Particular attention was focussed on backward projection of the sound field on to a cylindrical surface. This is the application of acoustic holography to study the sound radiation in the audio frequency region. With the help of FFT and software developed for this purpose, the theoretical predictions using data from several cylindrical surfaces were compared. A detailed analysis of noise radiation from a cold sonic and supersonic free jet was also carried out. The experimental work involved the measurement of noise field from a 2.5 mm, 5 mm convergent and a convergent - divergent nozzle of exit diameter of 6.49 mm and area ratio 1.687 for designed Mach number of two. The experimental setup consisted essentially of a pressure chamber made of mild steel, designed to withstand 50 bar pressure. This chamber is a cylinder with dia 0.421 m and length 0.85 m. The nozzles were made of mild steel. Compressed air approximately at room temperature is supplied to the nozzle via a control valve. The measuring and recording instruments consists of B & K Microphones, Preamplifiers, Conditioning amplifier and a Mediator, which measure a Sound Pressure Level at a point. The nozzles were operated at pressure ratio upto 25 bar. The noise signal was processed through 12 channel data acquisition system. Acoustic pressure and SPL were" calculated using theoretical relations and software developed. Using this software Fast Fourier Transformations of raw signal was obtained from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Also constant SPL contour graphs were obtained. Source strength distribution at the jet boundary has been obtained by the principle of acoustic holography. Experimental values are closely matching with the results obtained by acoustic holography. The percentage error for acoustic pressure and SPL were less than 12%. The experimental results were used to obtain the source distribution in terms of gross jet parameters.

No description available.

The demand for more power and performance from electronic equipment has constantly been growing resulting in an increased amount of heat dissipation from these devices. Thermal management of high-density power control units for hybrid electric vehicles is one such application. Over the last few years, the performance of this power control unit has been improved and size has been reduced to attain higher efficiency and performance causing the heat dissipation as well as heat density to increase significantly. However, the overall cooling system has remained unchanged and only the heat exchanger corresponding to the power control unit (PCU) has been improved. This has allowed the manufacturing costs to go down. Efforts are constantly being made to reduce the PCU size even further and also to reduce manufacturing costs. As a consequence, heat density will go up (~ 200 – 250 W/cm2) and thus, a better high performance cooler/heat exchanger is required that can operate under the existing cooling system design and at the same time, maintain active devices temperature within optimum range (<120 – 125 °C) for higher reliability. The aim of this dissertation was to study the various cooling options based on jet impingement, mini-channel, ribbed mini-channel, phase change material and double sided cooling configurations for application in hybrid electric vehicle and other similar consumer products and perform parametric and optimization study on selected designs. Detailed experimental and computational analysis was performed on different cooling designs to evaluate overall performance. Severe constraints such as choice of coolant, coolant flow-rate, pressure drop, minimum geometrical size and operating temperature were required for the overall design. High performance jet impingement based cooler design with incorporated fin-like structures induced swirl and provided enhanced local heat transfer compared to traditional cooling designs. However, the cooling scheme could manage only 97.4% of the target effectiveness. Tapered/nozzle-shaped jets based designs showed promising results (~40% reduction in overall pressure drop) but were not sufficient to meet the overall operating temperature requirement. Various schemes of mini-channel arrangement, which were based on utilizing conduction and convection heat transfer in a conjugate mode, demonstrated improved performance over that of impingement cooling schemes. Impingement and mini-channel based designs were combined to show high heat transfer rates but at the expense of higher pressure drops (~5 times). As an alternate, mini-channel based coolers with ~1.5 mm size channels having trip strips or ribs were studied to accommodate the design constraints and to enhance local as well as overall heat transfer rates and achieve the target operating temperature. A step by step approach to the development of the heat exchanger is provided with an emphasis on system level design. The computational based optimization methodology is confirmed by a fabricated test bed to evaluate overall performance and compare the predicted results with actual performance. Additionally, one of the impingement based configuration (Swirl-Impingement-Fin) developed during the course of this work was applied to the internal cooling of a turbine blade trailing edge and was shown to enhance the thermal performance by at least a factor of 2 in comparison to the existing pin-fin technology for the conditions studied in this work. / Ph. D.

Divertors are in-vessel, plasma-facing, components in magnetic-confinement fusion reactors. Their main function is to remove the fusion reaction ash (α-particles), unburned fuel, and eroded particles from the reactor, which adversely affect the quality of the plasma. A significant fraction (~15 %) of the total fusion thermal power is removed by the divertor coolant and must, therefore, be recovered at elevated temperature in order to enhance the overall thermal efficiency. Helium is the leading coolant because of its high thermal conductivity, material compatibility, and suitability as a working fluid for power conversion systems using a closed high temperature Brayton cycle. Peak surface heat fluxes on the order of 10 MW/m^2 are anticipated with surface temperatures in the region of 1,200°C to 1,500°C. Recently, several helium-cooled divertor designs have been proposed, including a modular T-tube design and a modular finger configuration with jet impingement cooling from perforated end caps. Design calculations performed using the FLUENT® CFD software package have shown that these designs can accommodate a peak heat load of 10 MW/m^2. Extremely high heat transfer coefficients (~50,000 W/(m^2 K)) were predicted by these calculations. Since these values of heat transfer coefficient are considered to be outside of the experience base for gas-cooled systems, an experimental investigation has been undertaken to validate the results of the numerical simulations. Attention has been focused on the thermal performance of the T-tube and the finger divertor designs. Experimental and numerical investigations have been performed to support both divertor geometries. Excellent agreement has been obtained between the experimental data and model predictions, thereby confirming the predicted performance of the leading helium-cooled divertor designs for near- and long-term magnetic fusion reactor designs. The results of this investigation provide confidence in the ability of state-of-the-art CFD codes to model gas-cooled high heat flux plasma-facing components such as divertors.

<p>This study comprises experimental investigations and theoretical/empirical analyses of three forced-convective (pumped) boiling schemes: (i) confined round single jet and jet array impingement boiling, and flow boiling through conventional-sized (ii) concentric circular annuli and (iii) rectangular channels. These schemes could be utilized in the thermal management of various applications including high-heat-flux electronic devices, power devices, electric vehicle charging cables, avionics, future space vehicles, etc.</p>