Flow and Heat Transfer Enhancement Characteristics of Impinging Jets in Transitional Time Periodic Flow Regimes

The flow and heat transfer characteristics of an impinging jet on a perpendicular flat surface are obtained by two dimensional numerical simulations of laminar and transitional flow regimes for the Reynolds number of Re = 300, 350, and 400 for a Prandtl number of Pr = 0.7. A fixed jet to plate spacing of H/W = 5 and a given heat flux on the plate surface are considered. Temporal evolution of velocity and temperature fields, Fourier spectra of the velocity temporal evolution and time average local and global Nusselt numbers are obtained for increasing Reynolds numbers for determining the time depending behavior and its effect on the heat transfer characteristics. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that self-sustained transitional periodic flow regimes arise from a laminar regime, when the Reynolds number is further increased to Re = 400 and that these regimes spread out to the whole domain with similar time dependent characteristics due to the flow incompressibility. Evaluations of time average local and global Nusselt numbers demonstrate the asymmetric Gaussian-type spatial distribution and the increase of both parameters when the flow evolves through the transitional periodic regime, with reasonable increases on the pumping power requirements.