Natural Convection in a Square Cavity with Discrete Heating at the Bottom with Different Fin Shapes

Numerical study is carried out to investigate the effect of different fin shapes on heating a square cavity by small heating strip located at the bottom wall. The natural convection of air is considered with constant heat flux from heat source which is located at the center of the bottom wall. The width of the heating strip is assumed to be 20% of the total width of the bottom wall. The remaining (non-heated) part of the bottom wall and the top wall are adiabatic and the side walls are maintained at constant temperature. The investigation considered four shapes of aluminum fins with equal area and equal base width. The easy to fabricate fin shapes are considered as: rectangular, one triangular, two opposite triangular and two isosceles triangular shape. Other parameters considered are the total area of the fin (or the height of the fin) and the Grashof number in the laminar flow range. It is found that the heat transfer can be enhanced by either increasing the Grashof number or the height of the fins. In most of the investigated cases the heat transfer in the case of the two opposite triangular fins shape is found to be higher than that of the other shapes under the same conditions.