Thermal analysis of longitudinal a porous fin with temperature-dependent internal heat generation using the variation of parameters method

Abstract

The present study investigates the thermal performance of longitudinal a porous fin with temperature-dependent internal heat generation. The Darcy model is utilized to obtain the differential form of the governing equation that solves the nonlinear temperature distribution equation using the method of variation of parameters. Although this method is applied to solve both linear and nonlinear differential equations, there exist rare applications of this method to solve nonlinear heat transfer problems. In the present study, we applied the method to estimate the thermal analysis of the porous fin exposed to convection. The heat generation is assumed as a function of temperature. The effects of the convection parameter , internal heat generation , porosity and generation number parameter on the dimensionless temperature distribution are discussed in detail. The accuracy of the variation of parameters method is verified through comparison with homotopy perturbation method and the Matlab bvp4c solver (NUM). The results have disclosed that the variation of parameters method can be used as a very effective and practical approach for further studies of the porous medium.