Exploration of the effects of fin geometry and material properties on thermal performance of convective-radiative moving fins

Abstract

The performance of fins, commonly used as heat enhancement devices are greatly affected by both the geometry and material properties. These consideration in fin design has stimulated an extensive research interest in the recent time. In this study, investigation on the thermal responses of moving irregular porous fins with trapezoidal, concave and convex profiles of copper, aluminium, silicon nitrides and stainless steel materials is examined. The developed thermal model is solved using differential transform method (DTM). On the verification of result obtained with numerical method using Runge-Kutta, a good agreement with the solution of approximate method is achieved. In the parametric studies carried out, the effect of physical parameters such as convective-conductive, convective-radiative term, internal heat generation, porosity, surface emissivity, power index of heat transfer coefficient, Peclet number and Darcy number on the thermal behaviour of fins are examined and discussed. The comparative analysis carried out on the effect of materials on non-dimensional temperature distribution reveals that copper obtains the highest temperature while the stainless steel gets the lowest. More-so, the fins with concave geometry gives the highest volume adjusted efficiency with increase in Peclet number while that with convex profile has the least. These result output are essential and would be useful in the future design of fins with optimum size reduction and high efficiency.