Thermal performance of fully wet longitudinal porous fin with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, surface emissivity and heat transfer coefficient

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the thermal behaviour of a fully wet porous fin of longitudinal profile. The significance of radiative and convective heat transfer has been scrutinised along with the simultaneous variation of surface emissivity, heat transfer coefficient and thermal conductivity with temperature. The emissivity of the surface and the thermal conductivity are considered as linear functions of the local temperature between fin and the ambient. Darcy’s model was considered to formulate the heat transfer equation. According to this, the porous fin permits the flow to penetrate through it and solid–fluid interaction occurs.Design/methodology/approachRunge–Kutta–Fehlberg fourth–fifth-order method has been used to solve the reduced non-dimensionalized ordinary differential equation involving highly nonlinear terms.FindingsThe impact of pertinent parameters, such as convective parameter, radiative parameter, conductivity parameter, emissivity parameter, wet porous parameter, etc., on the temperature profiles were elaborated mathematically with the plotted graphs. The heat transfer from the fin enhances with the rise in convective parameter.Originality/valueThe wet nature of the fin enhances heat transfer and in many practical applications the parameters, such as thermal conductivity, heat transfer coefficient as well as surface emissivity, vary with temperature. Hence, the main objective of the current study is to depict the significance of simultaneous variation in surface emissivity, heat transfer coefficient and thermal conductivity with respect to temperature under natural convection and radiation condition in a totally wetted longitudinal porous fin.