Universitat Rovira i Virgili Department of Chemical Engineering

Advanced Transport Phenomena 2022-23

Performance of a triangular fin

Fins are used to increase the heat transfer from a surface by increasing the effective surface
area. A straight fin is any extended surface that is attached to a plane wall. The sketch below
illustrates the case of a straight triangular fin.

Typically, preliminary analyses of heat transfer from fins assume a uniform base temperature
on the plane wall, Tb, and a uniform convection heat transfer coefficient, h, on the fin surface.
That is, the convection heat flux (convection heat flow rate per unit surface area) at the fin
surface will be evaluated as:

q" = h (Ts - T∞)

where T∞ is the ambient temperature and Ts is the surface fin temperature, which will vary
with position. Moreover, it is often assumed that the depth of the fin, W, is much larger that
both its length, L, and its thickness, t. Under this assumption, the temperature distribution on
the fin surface can be obtained from an approximate 2D analysis (or from a 2D simulation)
and the total heat flow rate from the fin into the surroundings, Qf, can be subsequently
computed. The are two quantities commonly used to assess the heat transfer performance of
a fin:
• The fin effectiveness, εf, is defined as the ratio between the heat transfer rate from the
fin surface (Qf) to the heat transfer rate that would exist without the fin. Note that the
presence of fins would make no sense at all in the event of εf ≤1.
• The fin efficiency, ηf, is defined as the ratio between the heat transfer rate from the fin
surface to the maximum heat transfer rate that would be ideally achieved if all of the fin
surface was at the base temperature, Tb.
Note that in the context of the sketch above, the plane wall reference area (used to compute
εf) is Aw = W  t, whereas the fin surface area is Af = 2  W  (L2 + t2/4)0.5.

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Universitat Rovira i Virgili Department of Chemical Engineering
Advanced Transport Phenomena 2022-23

Your goal in the present exercise is to calculate, using Comsol, fin effectiveness and
efficiency for a straight triangular fin with L=80 mm and t=32 mm, when the fin material has a
thermal conductivity of k =25 W/m K, the base of the fin is maintained at Tb=115 ºC, and the
ambient temperature is T∞=15 ºC. Consider several values (perform a parameter sweep in
Comsol) of the heat transfer coefficient in the 10≤h≤150 W/m2 K range.
1. In the post-processing section, your Comsol program must plot1 the calculated values
of εf and ηf against the dimensionless quantity ξ = m L, with m = (2 h/k t) 0.5. In the
efficiency plot, you should also compare the numerical (Comsol) fin efficiency values
with the theoretical ones (for the approximate 1D problem, i.e., assuming the
temperature in the fin is just a function of x, the distance to the base), given by

(1)

where I0 and I1 respectively are modified zero-order and first-order Bessel functions of
the first kind2.
2. If the cooling media is a gas (e.g., air) then radiation heat transfer from the fin and
plane wall surfaces into the surrounding ambient ought to be taken into account.
Consider including radiation heat transfer rates into the above definitions of εf and ηf. At
a qualitative level, can you say whether taking into account radiative heat transfer will
increase fin effectiveness/efficiency, will decrease it, or neither?
3. To test your answer to the question posed in part (2), revise your Comsol code by
assuming that the fin and plane wall surfaces behave (from the radiation heat transfer
point of view) as diffuse, gray surfaces with an emissivity of ϵ = 0.90. That is, under this
assumption the radiation heat flux from the surface into the surroundings will be
(2)
where σ = 5.6710-8 W/(m2K4) and the values of surface and ambient temperature
must be provided in Kelvin. Redefine the fin effectiveness and efficiency and produce a
second version of the εf / ηf versus ξ plots. With respect to the previous results (no
surface radiation) in part (1), what is the change (%) in fin effectiveness and fin
efficiency for h = 10 W/m2 K? And for h = 150 W/m2 K?

Hint: As is shown in the screen capture overleaf, to properly set the diffuse surface BC in
Comsol you will have to enter the emissivity value manually (I previously defined the global
emis parameter), the ambient temperature (idem for Ta) and, in the "Model Inputs"
subsection, specify that the computed temperature field ("Tempeature (ht)") is used.

1 Alternatively, you may export the numerical values, produce the required plots by other means and include
them in a small report file that you would also upload into the Moodle task.
2 In Comsol these analytical functions are invoked as besseli(n, z), where n is the order (0 or 1 in the present
exercise) and z stands for the argument.

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Universitat Rovira i Virgili Department of Chemical Engineering
Advanced Transport Phenomena 2022-23