Convective-radiative thermal investigation of a porous dovetail fin using spectral collocation method

Abstract

An inverted or reversed trapezoidal profiled fin (dovetail fin) is a fin with an irregular cross-sectional area that is used for improved performance in double pipe heat exchanger applications. The current investigation focuses on the temperature distribution in an internal heat-generating longitudinal dovetail porous fin. A second-order ordinary differential equation (ODE) governs the heat transfer problem of a dovetail fin, and dimensionless terms are used to reduce it to a non-dimensional form. The resulting ODE is solved numerically using the spectral collocation method (SCM) via a local linearization strategy, and the temperature distribution in the dovetail profiled fin is discretized using Chebyshev-Gauss-Lobatto (CGL) collocation points and Chebyshev polynomials. The effect of various thermal parameters on the non-dimensional temperature profile and fin efficiency is graphically depicted for a fin with both convective and insulated tip conditions. As a result, for higher values of the convective-conductive and porosity parameter, the temperature in the dovetail fin distributes in a declining manner.