ABSTRACT:

In this study, a systematic approach is adopted to study the natural convection heat transfer from rectangular fin array. The experiment set up consists of the different aluminum radial fin structures and nine thermocouples placed at different location on fin structure to measure fin surface temperature and base temperature. Experiments are performed and steady-state observations are recorded. Taguchi method is applied to manufacture different fin array structures which use only a portion of the total possible combinations to estimate the effects of main factors and the effects of some of the interactions thus minimize the number of tests required. For this Taguchi L9 orthogonal array was used, which has nine rows corresponding to the number of tests, with three columns at three levels. By using Taguchi optimization technique, nine different models were manufactured by varying length of fin, height of fin and number of fins. From this one optimum design will be found out using MINI TAB software. The experimental result are validated by using CFD software.