Analysis of pin fins with radiation

Abstract

The design of fins for heat transfer enhancement remains a topic of great interest in a number of engineering areas and applications, despite a broad and deep prior literature on the subject. Rapid prediction of the effects of convection, conduction and radiation is still an area of concern. For hot-flow conditions, the fin is normally mounted in a cooled surface, leading to substantial axial conduction. Also, radiation plays a very important role in hot flow conditions. One can apply detailed computational methods for simultaneous convection, conduction and radiation heat transfer, but such approaches are not suitable for rapid, routine design studies. So, there is still a place for approximate analytic methods, and that is the subject of this paper. We have extended the traditional pin fin analysis to include a more realistic radiation treatment and also considered variable thermal conductivity, variable heat transfer coefficients over the tip and sides of the fin with variable area distribution, variable internal heat generation and then produced a MATLAB solution procedure for routine use by designers and analysts.