Parametric Investigation of Inlet Pressure and Diffuser Angle Impact on Adjustable Air Amplifier Performance

This paper is part of a comprehensive study investigating the potential of an air flow amplifier designed to replace rotary fans for various industries where their performance is undesirable like electronics cooling applications. The air amplifier has inherent benefits when compared to rotary fans such as no moving parts, and a focused high speed air flow along the bottom of the server. The current study conducted a parametric study to understand the hydrodynamic characteristics of the air amplifier over a large inlet pressure range 50 Pa - 5500 Pa. A diffuser angle of 15 degrees and a nozzle gap width of 0.94 mm achieved the highest overall total flowrate for all inlet pressures tested ranging from a 0.6% to 36.7% improvement compared to other configurations. The air amplifier achieved a minimum entrainment ratio of 3.8 and a maximum of 6.3.