Natural Convection Heat Transfer From a Cylinder With High Conductivity Permeable Fins

Abstract

The problem of laminar natural convection from a horizontal cylinder with multiple equally spaced high conductivity permeable fins on its outer surface was investigated numerically. The effect of several combinations of number of fins and fin height on the average Nusselt number was studied over a wide range of Rayleigh number. Permeable fins provided much higher heat transfer rates compared to the more traditional solid fins for a similar cylinder configuration. The ratio between the permeable to solid Nusselt numbers increased with Rayleigh number, number of fins, and fin height. This ratio was as high as 8.4 at Rayleigh number of 106, non-dimensional fin height of 2.0, and with 11 equally spaced fins. The use of permeable fins is very advantageous when high heat transfer rates are needed such as in today’s high power density electronic components.