A Computational Study on the Momentum and Heat Transfer Distribution of a Low Frequency Round Impinging Synthetic Jet

Impinging synthetic jets have been considered as a possible solution for cooling miniature structures. It has been shown that synthetic jet performance is sensitive to the distance between the jet nozzle and the target surface where enhancement of heat transfer decreases with a reduction in nozzle-to-target plate distance. At low nozzle-to-target spacing, no detailed information about the momentum and temperature fields have been shown in prior literature, therefore further investigation is needed. In this study, a 3-D computational fluid dynamics model was constructed to determine the flow and temperature fields of a meso-scale synthetic jet at a nozzle-to-target surface spacing of H/D = 2, Re_D,j= 1400 and f = 500 Hz. Unlike the majority of previous computational studies, rather than specifying the boundary conditions at the nozzle, the flow inside the synthetic jet device was solved by specifying the time dependent boundary conditions on the vibrating diaphragm and utilizing the moving mesh technique. Local surface pressure and heat transfer coefficient distributions were determined and discussed. It was found that the pulsating flow at the nozzle exit for a round jet generates vortex rings and these rings seem to have some considerable effects on the target surface profiles.