Heat transfer from rotating annular fins

Abstract

Experiments have been performed to determine the heat transfer coefficients for arrays of shaft-attached, rotating annular fins. The experiments encompassed a wide range of rotational speeds and interfin spacings (including the limiting case of the single annular fin). The efficiency of the fins was equal to one. It was found that the fin heat transfer coefficient decreased with decreasing interfin spacing, the extent of the decrease being of major proportions at low rotational speeds but being quite moderate at high speeds. Thus, closely spaced fins can be used at high rotational speeds without a significant spacing-related decrease in the transfer coefficient, but at low speeds the fins must be farther apart to avoid overly low values of the coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient also decreased as the rotational speed decreased, with a particularly rapid dropoff at low speeds when the interfin spacing was small. For the most part, the fin heat transfer coefficients substantially exceeded those for an unfinned rotating shaft, thereby providing an incentive for finning. It was also found that at high rotational speeds, the heat transfer coefficient for a rotating disk served as a lower bound for the annular-fin heat transfer coefficients. To facilitate the use of the results for design, a correlation was developed which represents the fin heat transfer coefficient as a continuous function of the investigated independent parameters.