Transient and steady state solutions for laminar flow over a finite thickness fin in a parallel plate channel

Strip-fins, either inline or staggered, are commonly used in compact heat exchangers. Modeling work for such geometries has usually concentrated on zero-thickness fins. But thickness effects are important because they affect the flow in two ways: First, finite thickness fins introduce a form drag which increases the pressure drop in the exchanger. Second, recirculating zones are produced behind the fins, and this affects the heat transfer from the downstream fins. The present work models a single short fin at the entrance of a parallel plate channel, using two numerical methods. The first method, entitled ″Simple Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian″ (SALE) technique, is capable of handling time-dependent full conservation equations governing the velocity and energy fields. The second method is a simple parabolic scheme that recently has been available for the solution of steady laminar separated flows.