The jet impingement phenomenon plays an important role among the heat transfer intensification methods. Very often its application and analyses refer to simple flat surfaces, while there is a lack of information in the literature for cases addressing curved surfaces. In the present work, the single jet impingement on the non-flat (concave and convex) surface is studied for a wide range of geometries, which originate from the mini-jet heat-exchanger design. The numerical simulations were performed by an advanced ζ-f turbulence model implemented in the open-source OpenFOAM (ESI-OpenCFD Ltd, Bracknell, United Kingdom) code. Noticeable differences in the phenomena occurring on the convex and concave surfaces were identified in the stagnation zone. Besides, the existence and location of the secondary peak in the Nusselt number distribution differed between the cases. These distributions were influenced by the shape of geometry, which determined flow characteristics and resulting heat transfer performance. The origins of these differences were looked at in the turbulence characteristics close to the impinged surface of the stagnations zone and its vicinity, where turbulence kinetic energy and enstrophy were analysed. It was stated that the differences are already noticeable for the single jet impingement case, but they might sum up when multiple jets are considered. Therefore, here presented results would be important for the analysis of the overall unit of mentioned mini-jets heat-exchanger.

One of the methods of heat transfer enhancement is utilization of the turbulent impinging jets, which were recently applied, for example, in the heat exchangers. Their positive impact on the heat transfer performance was proven, but many questions related to the origin of this impact are still unanswered. In general, the wall-jet interaction and the near-wall turbulence are supposed to be its main reason, but their accurate numerical analysis is still very challenging. The authors’ aim was to construct the numerical model which can represent the real phenomena with good or very good accuracy. Starting with an analysis of single jet and obtaining the agreement with experimental data, it will be possible to extend the model towards the whole minijets heat exchanger. The OpenFOAM software, Bracknell, UK was used for that purpose, with our own implementation of the ζ-f turbulence model. The most difficult area to model is the stagnation region, where the thermal effects are the most intensive and, at the same time, strongly affected by the conditions in the pipe/nozzle/orifice of various size (conventional, mini, micro), from which the jet is injected. In the following article, summary of authors’ findings, regarding significance of the velocity profile and turbulence intensity at the jet place of discharge are presented. In addition, qualitative analysis of the heat transfer enhancement is included, in relation to the inlet conditions. In the stagnation point, Nusselt number differences reached the 10%, while, in general, its discrepancy in relation to inlet conditions was up to 23%.

Most of the flows occurring in the engineering systems are turbulent and their accurate numerical analysis is still challenging, especially when combined with the heat transfer. One of the methods of heat transfer enhancement is utilization of the turbulent impinging jets, which were recently applied also in the heat exchangers. Their positive impact on the heat transfer performance was proven, but many questions related to its origin are still unanswered. In general, the wall-jet interaction and the near-wall turbulence are supposed to be its main reason. The authors are interested in construction of the numerical model assuring the results as close as possible to the experimental one and then modelling the transport processes in the heat exchanger. The most difficult area to model is the stagnation region, where the thermal effects are strongly affected by the conditions in the pipe/nozzle/orifice, from which the jet is originated. In the following article, summary of authors’ findings, regarding significance of the velocity profile or turbulence intensity at the inlet, are presented. In addition, qualitative analysis of the heat transfer enhancement is included, in relation to the inlet conditions.

Jet impingement is a method of the heat transfer enhancement applied in the engineering systems. The idea is to generate fast-flow fluid jet which impinge on the heated (or cooled) surface, causing significantly higher heat transfer rate. Although some flat surface jet impingement cases are described in the literature, the validated data is still limited. The reason is coming from the fact, that these flows are hydrodynamically complex. Therefore the numerical analysis is necessary to understand the phenomena, especially in the range of turbulent flow. The well-known and accurate method is Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. However, depending on the applied turbulence model, various results can be obtained. The reason is that the jet impingement strongly depends on the complex boundary layer effects and their resolving is still challenging for RANS models and until now it is their weakest point. In the paper, the hydrodynamic and thermal, numerical results of jet impingement are presented, depending on selected RANS based models. The aim was to indicate their ability to anticipate the turbulence parameters.