Effects of Nozzle Pitch Adaptation in Micro-Scale Liquid Jet Impingement

With ever increasing integration density of electronic components, the demand for cooling solutions capable of removing the heat generated by such systems grows along with it. It has been shown that a viable answer to this demand is the use of direct liquid jet impingement. While this method can generally be scaled to the cooling of large areas, this is restricted by the necessity of coolant flow rate scaling. In this study, the benefits and restrictions of using increased nozzle pitch to remedy the increasing demand for overall flow rate are investigated. To this end, a model is validated against experimental findings and then used for computational fluid dynamics simulations, exploring effects of the pitch change for micro-scale nozzle diameters and nozzle-to-target spacings. It is found that while this method is efficient in adjusting the tradeoff between total coolant flow rate and pressure drop up to a certain pint, the occurrence of a hydraulic jump in the cavity causes a deterioration of its effect for large nozzle pitches.