Experiments were conducted to study the effect of inclination angle（the angle between the normal of surface and the axis of symmetry of the spray）on heat transfer of spray cooling in the non-boiling regime by using water as coolant.A generalized correlation was developed for local and average Nusselt numbers as a function of the spray Reynolds number and non-dimensional temperature when the mass flow rate ranged from 4.44—7.05 L8226;h-1.The spray was produced by using a semi-solid swirl nozzle under the atomization pressure of 0.5 MPa.The results showed that at a fixed inclination angle，the optimum orifice-to-surface distance where the heat transfer performance was the best was determined when the major axis of the elliptical spray impact area intersected the square test surface.Comparing different inclination angles from 0° to 49° at the optimum orifice-to-surface distance，the heat transfer performance and cooling efficiency increased with increasing inclination angle.