CFD analysis of natural convection heat transfer augmentation from square conductive horizontal and inclined pin fin arrays

ABSTRACT

Numerical investigations on natural convection heat transfer from a vertical isothermal plate with pin fins have been made by solving the Navier–Stokes equation along with the energy equation. Average Nusselt number for the plate with different configurations of pin fins have been obtained. It was observed that the maximum increase of the average Nusselt number occurs at S_v/L = 0.2 for θ = 45° with fin height of 24 mm (H/t = 8). The average Nusselt number increases with fin aspect ratio and decreases with angle of inclination. There is not much difference between the average Nusselt number for in-line and staggered arrangement of fins for the range of parameters studied in the present work. A correlation is developed to predict the average Nusselt number of the plate as a function of fin spacing in stream- and span-wise direction, aspect ratio of fins and its angle of inclination.

KEYWORDS:

• Augmentation factor
• heat transfer
• natural convection
• plate-fin heat exchanger
• square pin fin
• aspect ratio