Analysis of convective longitudinal fin with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and internal heat generation

In this study, analysis of heat transfer in a longitudinal rectangular fin with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and internal heat generation was carried out using finite difference method. The developed systems of non-linear equations that resulted from the discretization using finite difference scheme were solved with the aid of MATLAB using fsolve. The numerical solution was validated with the exact solution for the linear problem. The developed heat transfer models were used to investigate the effects of thermo-geometric parameters, coefficient of heat transfer and thermal conductivity (non-linear) parameters on the temperature distribution, heat transfer and thermal performance of the longitudinal rectangular fin. From the results, it shows that the fin temperature distribution, the total heat transfer, and the fin efficiency are significantly affected by the thermo-geometric parameters of the fin. Also, for the solution to be thermally stable, the fin thermo-geometric parameter must not exceed a specific value. However, it was established that the increase in temperature-dependent properties and internal heat generation values increases the thermal stability range of the thermo-geometric parameter. The results obtained in this analysis serve as basis for comparison of any other method of analysis of the problem. (C) 2016 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).