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To investigate the spray cooling characteristics and the impact of spray parameters such as chamber pressure, spray height, and spray tilt angle on heat transfer efficiency, a mathematical model based on the Eulerian–Lagrangian frame was established for an R410A closed-loop spray cooling system. The results revealed that the spray pattern is conical, with the center velocity significantly higher than the edge velocity. The temperature distribution of the cooling surface and liquid film height both exhibit a "W" shape, and the surface temperature is lower where the liquid film is thin. There is an optimal liquid film height of approximately 5 μm, at which the cooling surface temperature is the lowest. The surface temperature increases with an increase in the spray chamber pressure. Considering average cooling surface temperature, the optimal tilt angle is 40° with an average surface temperature of 330.1 K. When considering wall temperature and wall heat transfer coefficient uniformity, however, the optimal tilt angle is 10°, leading to the average surface temperature of 332.6 K. When increasing the optimal spray height to 70 mm, the average surface temperature is 313.4 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Spray cooling heat transfer of various surface structures are investigated numerically. • 3D Euler-Lagrangian simulation is performed and wall-film model is used. • Liquid film thickness and streamlines are computed in the vicinity of different fin geometries. • Local film thickness increases in grooves. • The film velocity magnitude depends on the fin blockage. Liquid impingement cooling in the form of jet or spray is an appropriate method to remove heat from small surfaces progressively utilized in industry. In this study, numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the effect of surface structure on heat transfer characteristics. Five different three-dimensional structured surfaces are investigated using Euler-Lagrangian approach. The effect of surface structures is discussed on the liquid film thickness, the liquid film velocity, and the heat flux with its uniformity for a given spray and temperature characteristics. The results show that the convective heat transfer strongly depends on both liquid film thickness and velocity. While the liquid film thickness always grows in the grooved surfaces, its velocity depends on the form and direction of the fins. The averaged values of the film thickness and velocity magnitude are almost independent of the surface temperature. Among the investigated surfaces, the parallel and circular patterns showed the best and worst performance on heat transfer characteristics, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Heat transfer for non-simultaneous droplets impinging onto a heated dry solid is examined. • Effects of time separation between adjacent droplets and surface temperature are studied. • Peak heat transfer rates for two droplets can be 68–100% higher than that of a single droplet. • Droplet-droplet interactions led to a decrease in the heat transfer rate and cooling efficiency. High generation of heat in the electronics industry presents a roadblock for further innovations in higher processing power due to complications associated with overheating. Commonly used air-based systems cannot cool high-performance electronics, mainly due to the relatively poor thermo-physical properties of air. Spray cooling is a technique capable of cooling or quenching objects at very high temperatures and heat fluxes. While there has been considerable research on single droplet impact to study the fundamentals of spray cooling, multiple droplet impingement offers more realistic realisations of the dynamics of spray phenomena. In this paper, we examined the fluid dynamics and heat transfer of multiple droplet impingement using high-speed imaging and fast heat flux measurements to capture droplet-droplet and droplet-surface interactions at constant droplet Weber number. We investigated an individual droplet and two non-simultaneous droplets of water at a constant horizontal droplet spacing and different time separations to analyse the heat transfer at different initial surface temperatures. Although not affected significantly by the surface temperature, the maximum diameter of the combined droplets decreased for increasing time separation due to the kinematic discontinuity from the interaction between droplets moving in opposite direction. For small time separation, the spreading droplet contact line of the first droplet collided with the moving contact line of the second droplet. The receding and the quasi-static contact lines of the first droplet was strongly and mildly impacted by the second spreading droplet diameter, respectively. However, all quasi-static droplet diameters increased for non-simultaneous droplet scenario, following by a small reduction in the droplet diameter when the surface temperature increased due to evaporation. Depending on the surface temperature and time separation between droplets, it was found that the peak heat transfer rates for non-simultaneous droplet impingement scenarios can be increased by 68% to 100% when compared to a single droplet case due to higher combined droplet diameter and fluid volume in contact with the heated solid surface. However, the overall droplet cooling efficiency was higher for the single droplet case, showing that the droplet-droplet interaction can decrease the potential cooling performance of droplets. The present study provides knowledge combining droplet-droplet interaction and heat transfer performance for future spray cooling system design and optimisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat dissipation and uniform temperature distribution are crucial to the operational reliability of electronic devices. In this study, the heat transfer enhancement and surface temperature non-uniformity (STNU) improvement of spray cooling are numerically investigated by CFD. The simulated results match well with experimental data under verification conditions with the maximum relative deviation below 7%, which demonstrates the numerical reliability of the two-phase flow model based on Euler-Lagrangian approach. The results of adjusting spray height reveal that there are different optimal spray heights for the heat transfer (4 mm) and the STNU (12.81 mm), indicating that the heat transfer enhancement and STNU improvement cannot be realized simultaneously. Based on this, two methods to enhance heat transfer and reduce STNU are developed. One method is to reduce the tangent angle θ and increase the tangent height H accordingly. It shows that the θ = 30°, H = 27.59 mm case has a maximum enhancement of 24.03% in heat flux relative to the θ = 100°, H = 6.21 mm case. Moreover, for all nozzles (θ = 30°∼100°), the lower STNU is attained at respective tangent heights. The other method is spray-array jets cooling, in which 132 micro-hole jets are added around the spray. It is found that the minimum STNU is obtained by spray-array jets cooling compared with all cases of spray cooling. In addition, it weakens the evaporation, but promotes the forced convection dramatically. Based on the analysis of several average liquid film microscopic characteristics and the droplet distribution, it is concluded that the mean film velocity, thickness and droplet coverage uniformity are the keys to determine heat transfer and STNU. • Heat transfer and surface temperature non-uniformity STNU are numerically studied. • Two methods are developed to enhance heat transfer and reduce STNU simultaneously. • The minimum STNU is attained by spray-array jets cooling relative to spray cooling. • The mean film velocity and thickness are the key factors affecting heat transfer. • The more uniform the coverage of the impacting droplets, the smaller the STNU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Liquid film morphologies are defined as 'continuous, interacted, and isolated' types. • The interval of wetted areas for the isolated films under P = 0.2 MPa is [0.11, 1.54] mm2. • The distributed and surface-averaged velocity of isolated films are predicted. Although the understanding of spray cooling has significantly improved, knowledge of the heat transfer mechanisms is still limited, and the related models based on experiments are separated from physical phenomena. As an example, while liquid film morphology have been investigated in detail, comparatively little is known about how the liquid films evolve on the surface, owing to the strong interaction and disturbance between atomised droplets and thin films with high turbulence. In this study, the liquid film dynamics of HFE-7000 spray in a two-phase cooling regime on a smooth and unpolished silicon surface were quantitatively captured, including the film morphology, film velocity, wetted area, and contact line length, under different inlet pressures and heat fluxes. Owing to the thermally induced agglomeration with increasing heat flux, the continuous liquid film finally dispersed into an isolated state, which is quantitatively defined as the 'isolated film regime' by the critical interval of the wetted area. The velocity of the isolated film under various conditions is a consequence of the radial velocity of the atomised droplets, surface conditions, and surface temperature gradient. Based on the correlation of the radial velocity of atomised droplets, prediction methods for the distribution and surface-averaged velocity of isolated films are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]