Performance and optimum design of convective–radiative rectangular fin with convective base heating, wall conduction resistance, and contact resistance between the wall and the fin base

This paper investigates the performance and optimum design of a longitudinal rectangular fin attached to a convectively heated wall of finite thickness. The exposed surfaces of the fin lose heat to the environmental sink by simultaneous convection and radiation. The tip of the fin is assumed to lose heat by convection and radiation to the same sink. The analysis and optimization of the fin is conducted numerically using the symbolic algebra package Maple. The temperature distribution, the heat transfer rates, and the fin efficiency data is presented illustrating how the thermal performance of the fin is affected by the convection-conduction number, the radiation-conduction number, the base convection Biot number, the convection and radiation Biot numbers at the tip, and the dimensionless sink temperature. Charts are presented showing the relationship between the optimum convection-conduction number and the optimum radiation-conduction number for different values of the base convection Biot number and dimensionless sink temperature and fixed values of the convection and radiation Biot numbers at the tip. Unlike the few other papers which have applied the Adomian’s decomposition and the differential quadrature element method to this problem but give illustrative results for specific fin geometry and thermal variables, the present graphical data are generally applicable and can be used by fin designers without delving into the mathematical details of the computational techniques.