The influence of the variable thermal conductivity of a vertical fin on a laminar-film condensation process

Abstract

In this paper, we study the conjugate film condensation heat transfer process in a vertical fin with temperature-dependent conductivity. The momentum and energy balance equations are reduced to a non-linear system of partial differential equations with five parameters: the Prandtl number, Pr-c, Jakob number, Ja, a non-dimensional parameter relating the characteristic lengths s, a variable thermal conductivity gamma and the aspect ratio of the plate epsilon. Using the small Jakob limit and the boundary layer approximation for the film condensation process, the overall mass flow rate of condensed fluid has been obtained for all possible values of the parametric space.