Near Critical Heat Flux From Small Substrates Under Controlled Spray Cooling

The increasing power density on electronic components has resulted in temperature problems related to the generation of hot spots and the need to remove high heat flux in small areas. This work is aimed at the cooling of small surfaces (1 mm × 1.2 mm) by using a monodisperse spray from thermal ink jet (TIJ) atomizers. Heat fluxes near the critical heat flux (CHF) are obtained for different conditions of cooling mass flow rate, droplet deposition, and number of active droplet jets. Experimental results at quasiequilibrium show the heat flux scales to the cooling mass flow rate. It is observed that two simultaneously activated jets result in slightly smaller heat flux compared to a single jet of droplets for the same mass flow rate. Droplet momentum and spreading or splashing, as determined by a combination of Weber number and Reynolds number effect via K = We^1/2Re^1/4, may impact the efficiency of the delivery of the cooling mass flow. Current experimental results at K = 24.5 and K = 52.2 for the copper surface temperatures ranging 110 – 120 °C indicate there is little influence of the splashing on the heat dissipation. System heat losses are measured experimentally and compared to a numerical and analytical solution to estimate the actual heat dissipated by the droplet change of phase.