Heat Transfer Analysis of Flat Plate Subjected to MultiJet Air Impingement using Principal Component Analysis and Computational Technique

The aim of this work is to investigate experimentally the variation in temperature, heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number of a hot plate subjected to multi-jet air impingement cooling to use the multi-objective optimization technique to arrive at optimum conditions. A flat plate of 15 cm x 10 cm is heated through a heating foil with a constant heat flux of 7667 W/m2. Air jets with and without swirling action are considered, fixing the distance of target surface from nozzle exit at 2D, 4D and 6D. Reynolds numbers 18000, 20000and 22000 and pipe diameters 8mm, 10mm and 12 mm have been considered for investigation. Experiments are designed and analyzed using Taguchi’s technique, coupled with principal component analysis for multi-variate optimization by calculating multi-response performance index (MRPI). Based on the observations made, it is concluded that lower H/D ratio and higher Reynolds number result in higher heat transfer coefficient, in accordance with the first principles. Heat transfer coefficient obtained for jets with swirl is compared with that of jet without swirling for the same Reynolds number and H/D ratio. Furthermore, it is concluded that introducing swirl results in increase of heat transfer coefficients for all the test conditions for 10mm and 12mm diameter jets. However for 8mm jet, introduction of swirl reduced the heat transfer rate for all the test conditions. From Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), it is found that significant contributions on outputs are due to the effect of H/D ratio and Reynolds number. Confirmation experiments with optimum condition result in improved heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number. Numerical simulation has also been performed with the optimum condition. It is observed that the simulation results are in consistence with the experimental results.