Differential Transform Method for Thermal Analysis of Exponential Fins under Sensible and Latent Heat Transfer

Abstract

The present study focuses to establish an analytical analysis on determining the performance of exponential fins under wet surface conditions with consideration of the temperature dependent thermal conductivity of fin material. The thermal performance is analyzed by differential transform method (DTM) for dehumidifying surface conditions. The process involved mass transfer is calculated with adopting humidity ratio as a polynomial function with fin surface temperature determined from the psychrometric correlation using regression analysis. The effect of wet surface and variable conductivity on temperature and fin efficiency has been studied in a comparative way. From results, dissimilar effects on the fin efficiency with the variation of same design constants have been identified for the different geometric exponential fins. © 2015 The Authors.