TRANSIENT CONJUGATE NATURAL CONVECTION HEAT TRANSFER ALONG A VERTICAL PLATE FIN IN A HIGH-POROSITY MEDIUM

Abstract

The non-Darcian effects on transient conjugate natural convection-conduction heat transfer from a two-dimensional vertical plate fin embedded in a high-porosity medium are studied numerically. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations for transient natural convection in the porous medium and transient heat conduction in the fin are solved numerically with a cubic spline collocation method. Numerical results for the heat transfer characteristics are presented for water and air at selected values of the convection-conduction parameter at different times. It is shown that the inertial effect on heat transfer characteristics is negligible at short times; its effect, however, becomes increasingly important at longer times. The time taken to reach steady state is longer for a fluid with a smaller Prandtl number and for a system with a smaller value of the convection-conduction parameter.