Study of the Effect of Initial Plate Temperature in Jet Impingement Cooling Process

Abstract

The microstructure characteristics and the properties of rolled steels are significantly affected by the heat transfer and boiling phenomena occurring during the jet impingement cooling on run-out tables (ROT). In this study, experiments are conducted using a full industrial-scale ROT facility with rectangular plates made of low-carbon stainless steel (type 316L). The plate is heated up to a temperature ranging from $500$ to $900\hspace{0.17em}°C$, then rapidly impinged using a single circular water jet, and the temperature drop is captured using an infrared thermal camera (FLIR A615 25°–50 Hz type). The dissipated heat flux, estimated experimentally using a 2D inverse heat conduction analysis, ranges from 6.1 to 3.4 MW m⁻² across different zones along the plate surface. The impact of different initial plate temperature on the boiling behavior is studied by developing a 2D-computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, and the results are closely aligned with the experimental findings. The results reveal that when estimating the heat flux from CFD simulations, the best accuracy is obtained when considering fluid temperature at a point close to the plate surface (about 1 μm above the surface). Furthermore, the maximum extracted heat flux (MHF) is significantly influenced by the initial temperature of the plate. Increasing the initial plate temperature from 500 to 900 °C led to an increase of 82% in the MHF in stagnation zone, and 137% increase in the parallel-flow region. The CFD model presented in this study and the full calculation of the boiling curves numerically will pave the road for investigating various practical parameters in jet impingement cooling.