ABSTRACT
The use of interrupted fins is the new trend in heat sink technology due to the increased heat transfer and reduced material cost. The reason for increased heat transfer is attributed to the developing conditions within the channel. Natural convection within the developing region of channels is not much explored owing to the coupled nature of governing equations while simplified solutions are available for fully developed region. This paper presents a way to decouple the momentum equation, so that the momentum equation can be independently solved using integral method. Analytically explicit expressions for velocity and temperature profiles, entrance length can be found out easily. The paper also shows the ratio with which thermal boundary layer exceeds hydrodynamic boundary layer for the case of air with Prandtl number 0.7. All the computations were done in the computer algebra software MATHEMATICA.
