Two-Dimensional Heat Transfer Through Long-Wide Insulated-Tip Thin Rectangular Fin: a Comparative Study

This paper presents a comparative study of the distribution of temperature in a long-wide, insulated-tip rectangular fin. The numerical analysis and comparison of 2-dimensional heat conduction problem have been performed using both finite element method (FEM) and differential quadrature method (DQM). The surface solutions in terms of temperature distribution and error have been presented for comparison using both the methods. In FEM, the elements were generated with equally spaced called conventional FEM (CFEM) and with non-equally spaced called optimum FEM (OFEM). In DQM, the generation of mesh are only with non-equally spaced, called optimum DQM (ODQM). The ambient temperature is considered 20°C. The average percentage errors for OFEM, CFEM and ODQM are respectively 3.77E-02, 1.16E-01 and 4.10E-02. The surface temperature distribution and error comparison reveal that OFEM results are better and more precise than ODQM and CFEM results which show its potentiality.