An Experimental Setup for Multiple Air Jet Impingement Over a Surface

Air jet impingement technology receives considerable attention due to its high performance for heat transfer enhancement in thermal equipment, providing high heat transfer rates. Due to its inherent characteristics of high average heat transfer coefficients and uniformity of the heat transfer over the impinging surface, this technology is implemented in a variety of engineering applications and industrial processes, such as reflow soldering, drying of textile, cooling of turbojet engine blades and fusion reactors. Multiple jet impingement involves several variables such as: jets arrangement, jet diameter, nozzle-to-surface distance, nozzle shape, jet-to-jet spacing, jet velocity and Reynolds number, among others. However, the total control of all these parameters is still one of the remarkable issues of the thermal design of jet impingement systems. In some industries that have implemented this technology in their processes, such as reflow soldering, the range of values of these variables are established through empiricism and “trial and error” techniques. To improve the process and to reduce time and costs, it is fundamental to define accurately all the process parameters in order to obtain an optimized design with a high degree of control of the heat transfer over the target surface. To perform an accurate and complete study of the multiple jet impingement variables for a specific application, the development of both experimental and numerical studies is fundamental in order to obtain reliable results. In that sense, this work reports the project and construction of a purpose-built test facility which has been commissioned, using a PIV system. This experimental setup is based on the oven used in the reflow soldering process. The optimization of the multiple jets geometry which is integrated in the experimental setup is herein described and discussed both experimentally and numerically. The numerical simulation of the jet impingement inside the oven was conducted using the ANSYS software, specially designed to predict the fluid behavior. Regarding the relevance of the multiple jet impingement, this work intends to improve the knowledge in this field and to give reliable and scientifically proved answers to the industries that apply this technology in their processes.