Optimum Shapes for Fins Rejecting Heat by Convection and Radiation

Abstract Earlier results of the author on minimum mass thin fins are specialized to the case in which the fin rejects heat by both convection and radiation. This process yields fins of smaller mass than those of Cobble who recently obtained the properties of minimum mass thin fins whose temperature distribution can be described by a power law. We also show that the Cobble approach will yield the minimum mass thin fin only in the well-known cases of pure convection and pure radiation to surroundings at absolute zero.