Easy and rapid computation of the transfer of heat from annular fins of nearly optimal profile with the finite‐difference technique and the shooting method

Abstract

It is undeniable that the annular fin of hyperbolic profile with constant thermal conductivity and uniform convective coefficient is important in many applications of heat transfer engineering. The importance of this fin configuration stems from its close resemblance to the annular fin of optimal cross section capable of delivering maximum heat transfer for a given volume of material. This paper addresses two simple numerical procedures for solving the generalized Bessel equation that governs the temperature variation in annular fins of hyperbolic profile, one is the finite‐difference technique with an uncharacteristic coarse mesh and the other is the shooting method. Certainly, the central objective here is to avoid the evaluation of the elegant, but intricate exact analytic temperature distributions and companion fin efficiencies containing modified Bessel functions of fractional order.