Open Access

ARTICLE

THERMO-GEOMETRIC PARAMETER EFFECTS ON CONVECTIVELY COOLED INHOMOGENEOUS RECTANGULAR FIN

Ernest Léontin Lemoubou^a , Hervé Thierry Tagne Kamdem^a,* , Jean Roger Bogning^b

a Department of Physics/Faculty of Sciences, University of Dschang, P.O. Box 67,Dschang, Cameroon
b Department of Physics, H.T.T.C. Bambili, University of Bamenda, Bamenda , Cameroon

* Corresponding Author: Email:

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer 2017, 8, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5098/hmt.8.34

Abstract

Numerical experiments involving heat transfer were performed to analyze the influence of both fin thermo-geometric parameter and cooling boundary conditions on the temperature distribution and the efficiency of convective cooled inhomogeneous rectangular fin. The inhomogeneity of the fin is due to both temperature dependent thermal conductivity and convection heat coefficients. The analysis was facilitated by the use of the differential transformation method, which can solve nonlinear differential equation. A specific application is first made for temperature/efficiency homogeneous fin predictions and the results are in excellent agreement with standard exact results. Predictions of inhomogeneous fin temperature and efficiency for three different convection conditions are then performed. The thermo-geometric parameter range for numerical experiments was from 0.0 to 1.0. The results reveal that the thermo-geometric parameter plays a great role in the amount of fin temperature distribution and efficiency. The temperature distribution within the fin is low for high thermo-geometric parameter value and increases rapidly for large values of this parameter. For geometric parameter greater than 0.3, the use of rectangular fin will be optimal for heated or cooled process having heat transfer coefficient increased with increased temperature as generally accounted in laminar or turbulent natural convection. On the other hand, the efficiency of the inhomogeneous fin does not depend on cooling conditions when the thermo-geometric parameter is less than 0.3.

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