RESULTS

Ambient air temperature, tA = 27.0℃

Power input = 20Watts
Air Heater Temperature, tH (℃) tH – tA (℃)
Velocity
Flat Pinned Finned Flat Pinned Finned
(m/s)
85.6 – 27.0 76.2 – 27.0 74.9 – 27.0
0.0 85.6 76.2 74.9
= 58.6 = 49.2 = 47.9
84.0 – 27.0 63.6 – 27.0 62.7 – 27.0
1.0 84.0 63.6 62.7
= 57.0 = 36.6 = 35.7
81.9 – 27.0 52.3 – 27.0 51.8 – 27.0
1.5 81.9 52.3 51.8
= 54.9 = 25.3 = 24.8
TABLE 1 : RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT

Surface Temperature vs Air Velocity

70

60
Surface Temperature (C)

50

40
Flat
30 Pinned
Finned
20

10

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
Air Velocity (m/s)

FIGURE 1 : GRAPH OF SURFACE TEMPERATURE AGAINST AIR VELOCITY

DISCUSSION
This experiment’s objectives are to determine the use of fin (extended surface) in order
to improve the heat transfer in forced convection and also to perform calculation to find the
heat transfer coefficient for each flat, pinned and finned surfaces. The first plate was insert into
the machine and was heated until 80℃. The heater temperature was taken three times with
different air velocity which are 0m/s, 1.0m/s and 1.5m/s. These steps were repeated with pinned
and finned plate.

The experiment was conducted, and all data is jotted and tabulated in a form of a graph.
By comparing the graph between flat, pinned surface and finned surface, it can be seen that
finned and pinned surface are having a larger slope compared to flat surface. This shows that
finned and pinned surface are having smaller convection heat transfer coefficient, h, rather than
flat surface. Some calculations were performed, and it showed that the largest surface area was
finned plates. This result obeys the Newton’s Law of Cooling equation which is

where when the surface area increases, the convection heat transfer will
decrease. From the plates experimented, the largest surface area is finned plate while the
smallest surface area is flat plate.

The larger surface area of the plate will cool faster because the surface area is exposed
to the air. Theoretically, when air velocity increases, the temperature will decrease. This can
be proved in the data and result obtained where finned plate has the largest surface area and its
temperature decreases when air velocity increases. From the results obtained, it can be
concluded that this experiment was a success as it follows the objective and rules of the
experiment.