OPTIMUM DIMENSIONS OF THE CONTINUOUS PLATE FIN FOR VARIOUS TUBE ARRAYS

The finite-difference and sector methods are applied to determine the efficiency of the continuous plate fin pierced by a regularly spaced a rray of circular tubes in staggered or in-line tube arrays. The compar ison of the fin efficiency between the present numerical results, appr oximate solutions obtained from the sector method, and previous result s is made. it is found that the sector method underpredicts the effici ency of the hexagonal and rectangular fins. However, the previous meth od can overpredict the fin efficiency for lower r(o)/a values. Results also show that the plate fin with the staggered tube array is more ef ficient than that with the in line tube army. A simple expression rela ting the fin efficiency to the tube radius, tube spacing,fin thickness , and material properties is obtained by using the least-squares fitti ng of numerical data. The main purpose of the present study is to dete rmine the optimum dimensions of the continuous plate fin with various tube arrays that can give the greatest amount of heat dissipation unde r the conditions of the given physical quantities.