%0 Journal Article %A Croce, Giulio %A Comini, Gianni %A D'Agaro, Paola %D 2010 %I Begell House %K coupled problem, pin fins, pin effectiveness, overall effectiveness, thermal boundary conditions %N 1 %P 43-54 %R 10.1615/ComputThermalScien.v2.i1.40 %T COUPLED CONDUCTION AND CONVECTION IN COOLANT PASSAGES WITH ARRAYS OF PIN FIN %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/648192910890cd0e,0d0c588723d84560,775322141a7f98a2.html %V 2 %X A numerical analysis of conjugate heat transfer in coolant passages with arrays of pin fins is carried out. Uniform heat flow is applied externally to the base plate of the pins, which is thermally conducting. The base plate itself redistributes the applied heat flux, allowing energy flux to concentrate toward the pins. The effect of such a redistribution on convective heat transfer is investigated at different Reynolds numbers and different base thicknesses of the plate. Most previous literature references use reduced domain, excluding the base plate and applying thermal boundary conditions, either fixed heat flux or fixed temperature, straight on the interface plane between the fluid and the base of the plate. Here, such reduced models are compared with the fully conjugate heat-transfer solution. It is shown that for common highly conductive solid materials, the most appropriate boundary condition is a Dirichlet boundary on the temperature. Furthermore, above a thickness threshold value, the convective Nusselt value does not change significantly with the thickness itself. %8 2010-03-01