A REVIEW ON EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF STAGGERED FINS

It is proved till today that special surface geometry or special fin pattern may enhance heat transfer coefficients. The area selected for investigation is experimental analysis of one of the special fin pattern i.e. staggered fin arrays and software validation. They are compared with continuous fin array. From the literature survey, test section and fin arrays under study are designed. For each 33.33 % and 50% lengthwise staggering is done. Then by performing an experiment, readings of 12 temperatures were recorded for four different heater inputs. From these readings Nusselt number for each array for given range of heater input is calculated. Conduction and radiation losses are also calculated. The arrays under study are compared. It was predicted that array with staggered fins will have higher values of Nusselt number for all values of heater input and increases when % staggering is increased and the experiment gave the same results. Thus it is concluded that the staggered arrangement enhances the heat transfer rate. In other words it can be concluded that the staggered arrays may be used for augmentation of heat transfer in vertical fins. Software analysis results are compared with experimental results.