Experimental and numerical investigations on jet impingement cooling for electronic modules

In this paper, the influence of outlet arrangement and plenum structure on impingement cooling is experimentally and numerically investigated in a typical 1-U confined server space. Three outlets include Z-type, bilateral, and U-type arrangements, and the plenum configurations contain partially inclined, fully inclined, and staged layouts. As a result, using the U-type outlet or staged plenum may prominently compromise the impingement cooling performance on the target plates with lower pumping power. With numerical investigation, it is found that, for the case with Z-type outlet, the flowrate of jet impingement increases alongside the streamwise direction. Besides, the impingement stagnation region on target plates with the minimum thermal resistance may shift toward the outlet. Meanwhile, the uniformity of jet impingement can be improved by 10.7% and 50.3% when the bilateral and U-type outlets are applied, respectively, and the jet impingement is changed to perpendicular direction due to the opposite cross flow from the coming flow direction. On the other hand, by applying the inclined plenum and staged plenum, the uniformity of jet impingement can be dramatically improved by 113.9% and 215.1%, respectively. However, the local jet impingement velocity distribution is still nonuniform. Hence, a novel design of impingement plate based on the concept of Coanda effect is proposed. The peak value of the thermal resistance on target plate can be reduced by 21.8% and 16.0% at the center region and the fore part of the jet array.