High-power electronics thermal management with intermittent multijet sprays

Thermal management plays a crucial role in the development of high-power electronics devices, e.g. in electric vehicles. The greatest energy demands occur during power peaks, implying dynamic thermal losses within the vehicle's driving cycle. Therefore, the need for devising intelligent thermal management systems able to efficiently respond to these power peaks has become a technological challenge. Experiments have been performed with methanol in order to quantify the maximum heat flux removed by a multijet spray to keep the 4 cm2 surface temperature stabilized and below the threshold of 125 °C. A multijet atomization strategy consists in producing a spray through the multiple and simultaneous impact of Nj cylindrical jets. Moreover, the spray intermittency is expressed through the duty cycle (DC), which depends on the frequency and duration of injection. Results evidence that: i) a shorter time between consecutive injection cycles enables a better distribution of the mass flow rate, resulting in larger heat transfer coefficient values, as well as higher cooling efficiencies; ii) compared with continuous sprays, the analysis evidences that an intermittent spray allows benefiting more from phase-change convection. Moreover, the mass flux is mainly affecting heat transfer rather than differences induced in the spray structure by using different multijet configurations. - Highlights: ► Intermittent spray cooling (ISC) is advantageous for intelligent thermal management. ► Distributing the mass flow rate through ISC improves heat transfer. ► Multijet sprays with increasing number of jets have higher heat transfer rates. ► ISC with multijet sprays benefit more from phase-change than continuous sprays.