Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

John M. Kuhlman.

Abstract

Spray cooling research is advancing the field of heat transfer and heat rejection in high power electronics. Smaller and more capable electronics packages are producing higher amounts of waste heat, along with smaller external surface areas, and the use of active cooling is becoming a necessity. Spray cooling has shown extremely high levels of heat rejection, of up to 1000 W/cm 2 using water.;Simulations of spray cooling are becoming more realistic, but this comes at a price. A previous researcher has used CFD to successfully model a single 3D droplet impact into a liquid film using the level set method. However, the complicated multiphysics occurring during spray impingement and surface interactions increases computation time to more than 30 days. Parallel processing on a 32 processor system has reduced this time tremendously, but still requires more than a day.;The present work uses experimental and computational results in addition to numerical correlations representing the physics occurring on a heated impingement surface. The current model represents the spray behavior of a Spraying Systems FullJet 1/8-g spray nozzle. Typical spray characteristics are indicated as follows: flow rate of 1.05x10-5 m3/s, normal droplet velocity of 12 m/s, droplet Sauter mean diameter of 48 microm, and heat flux values ranging from approximately 50--100 W/cm2 . This produces non-dimensional numbers of: We 300--1350, Re 750--3500, Oh 0.01--0.025.;Numerical and experimental correlations have been identified representing crater formation, splashing, film thickness, droplet size, and spatial flux distributions. A combination of these methods has resulted in a Monte Carlo spray impingement simulation model capable of simulating hundreds of thousands of droplet impingements or approximately one millisecond. A random sequence of droplet impingement locations and diameters is generated, with the proper radial spatial distribution and diameter distribution. Hence the impingement, lifetime and interactions of the droplet impact craters are tracked versus time within the limitations of the current model.;A comparison of results from this code to experimental results shows similar trends in surface behavior and heat transfer values. Three methods have been used to directly compare the simulation results with published experimental data, including: contact line length estimates, empirical heat transfer equation calculations, and non-dimensional Nusselt numbers. A Nusselt number of 55.5 was calculated for experimental values, while a Nu of 16.0 was calculated from the simulation.

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