Experimental and numerical study of multiple jets impinging a step surface

Multiple jet impingement is a widely implemented convective process for enhancing heat transfer over target surfaces. Depending on the engineering application, the impinging plate can have different configurations. However, the increased complexity of the surface induces complicated thermal behaviors that must be analyzed. In that sense, this study consisted of the experimental and numerical analysis of multiple jets impinging on a step surface. A particle image velocimetry technique was applied to measure velocity fields, while a heat flux sensor was mounted on the surface to determine the heat transfer. Numerical simulations, for both flat and non-flat plates, were conducted in ANSYS FLUENT applying the SST k-ω model, and experimental results were used to validate the model. Three surface configurations were analyzed, flat, 1 D , and 2 D steps, and the results show an increase in the average Nusselt number compared with the flat plate, 9% and 20%, respectively. This increase was mainly due to the intensification of the flow turbulence induced by the step. Numerical results were in good agreement with the experiments, but the heat transfer was slightly underpredicted for the 2 D step case due to the difficulty of predicting with accuracy the velocity field near the step. The first author would like to express her gratitude for the support given by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the MIT Portugal Program. This work was supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020 (ALGORITMI Center) and Project Scope UIDB/00319/2020 (METRICS Center).