Experimental investigation on heat dissipation performance of plate fin radiator enhanced through spray cooling

: Radiators are considered as critical equipment in modern technology and industrial sectors. However, it is easy to deteriorate the heat dissipation performance in high temperature environment, which may lead to performance degradation, shortened service life, and safety issues. In this paper, spray cooling technology was used to improve the heat dissipation performance of a plate fin radiator. The effects of nozzle diameter, spray pressure and spray distance on spray characteristics (i.e., spray particle size, spray cone angle and spray flow rate) of a single-phase pressure nozzle were investigated, and the effects of spray characteristics, spray temperature, distance and coolant temperature on the heat dissipation performance were investigated. The results show that the SMD at the spray distance of 20 cm is smaller than that at the spray distances of 10 cm and 15 cm. Under various spray conditions, the heat dissipation performance of nozzle with a diameter of 0.4 mm is better than that of nozzles with diameters of 0.3 mm and 0.5 mm. The best heat dissipation performance can be obtained under the conditions of spray pressure of 0.35 MPa and coolant temperature of 60°C, and it increases with the increase of spray pressure at other temperatures. The heat dissipation performance can be enhanced by 36% when the spray temperature is reduced from 50°C to 20°C. The heat dissipation performance increases with the increase of coolant temperature and reaches the highest at 80°C. Compared with pure air cooling, fan combined spray cooling can enhance the heat dissipation performance by 78.1%.