Synthetic jets for electronics cooling applications

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.

Compact, high functionality electronics resulted in high performance computing. These innovations lead to smaller electronic systems with higher heat fluxes than ever. However, thermal real estate has kept the same or even smaller for posing challenges to thermal scientists. Novel cooling techniques have been of interest to solve the demand. One of these technologies operates with microfludics principle creating vortex rings called synthetic jets. These jets are simply meso-scale devices operating at zero-net-mass-flux principle by ingesting and ejecting high velocity working fluid from a single opening. The ingestion/ejection produces periodic jet streams, which may have local velocities over 50 m/s. Based on the published literature, these jets can enhance the heat transfer in both natural and forced convection environments significantly. Recognizing the heat transfer physics over surfaces require a fundamental understanding of the flow physics caused by pulsating coolant flow. A computational study has been performed to understand the flow physics of a small scale synthetic jet. A second-order temporal implicit scheme was used for the unsteady terms to avoid stability issues. No secondary peaks are observed on the surface profiles, and the vortices created at the nozzle exit seem to have no effect on the surface profiles.