Piezoelectric Synthetic Jet Integrated With Heat Sink for Heat Transfer Enhancement

Synthetic jets, known as zero-net mass-flux (ZNMF) devices, have been widely used for cooling electronics. A synthetic jet is generally composed of a cavity with an orifice on one side and an oscillating diagram on the other side. The vibration of the diaphragm will generate a periodically impinging flow through the orifice which is found to be effective in enhancing heat transfer. The thermal performance of the synthetic jet is highly dependent on the peak velocity of the synthetic jet is able to generate. The orifice shape, orifice thickness, and the number of the orifices are the factors which affect the vibration condition of the diaphragm and thus to affect the performance of the synthetic jet. This study will use both experimental and computational methods to find out the optimal design of synthetic jet and how these factors affect synthetic jet performance. The synthetic jet arrays are driven by a piezoelectric stack actuator which is vibrating at around 720 Hz and the mean-to-peak amplitude is around 0.2 mm. The jet diaphragm (120 mm × 15 mm) is designed using a composite structure composed of a carbon fiber beam, a carbon fiber frame, and a jet frame fabricated by polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). Four different orifice shapes (square, single slot, double slot, and triangle) with the same area have been designed and the square orifice has the highest velocity. The effect of the orifice thickness is also studied by testing four kinds of PMMA films with different thicknesses (1.5 mm, 2 mm, 3 mm, and 4.5 mm) and the case with 4.5 mm thick orifice has the best performance. The numerical simulation is conducted using the CFD software ANSYS Fluent to support the experimental results. The vibrating of the diaphragm is defined as a moving wall using a user defined function. The fluid power consumed by the diaphragm is used to determine the performances of different designs. The same trend with orifice thickness has been found and the reason has been demonstrated.