Predicting Heat Transfer for Low- and High-Frequency Central-Orifice Synthetic Jets

As electronic devices are becoming more compact each day, the more effective and efficient active cooling technologies are needed. Microfluidic devices, such as synthetic jets, serve as a potential candidate to fulfill the thermal management needs of the next generation electronics. An experimental and computational study has been performed for circular central-orifice synthetic jets. First, a series of experiments was performed to quantify the actuator deflection, air velocity, heat transfer augmentation, and power consumption for central-orifice synthetic jets. Later, a computational study was performed utilizing the same boundary conditions in order to predict the deflection of the diaphragm. The experiments were conducted on three different types of synthetic jets, namely, low-, medium-, and high-frequency synthetic jets. Although a number of correlations were proposed for the prediction of Nu number for slot synthetic jets, no correlation was found to predict the average Nu number for a synthetic jet with a round orifice. Therefore, two correlations were developed, one for low- and medium-frequency synthetic jets and the other for high-frequency synthetic jets to predict the heat transfer coefficient as a function of the geometry, position, and operating condition for impinging flows. The proposed correlations are able to predict the impingement heat transfer of a synthetic jet with an accuracy of ±25% for a wide range of operating conditions and geometrical variables. Normalized frequency had the minimum impact on the average Nu number of a high-frequency synthetic jet compared with dimensionless distance, both have moderate impact on low- and medium-frequency jets.