Copyright © 2011 Raseelo J. Moitsheki and Charis Harley. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Steady heat transfer through a pin fin is studied. Thermal conductivity, heat transfer coefficient, and the source or sink term are assumed to be temperature dependent. In the model considered, the source or sink term is given as an arbitrary function. We employ symmetry techniques to determine forms of the source or sink term for which the extra Lie point symmetries are admitted. Method of separation of variables is used to construct exact solutions when the governing equation is linear. Symmetry reductions result in reduced ordinary differential equations when the problem is nonlinear and some invariant solution for the linear case. Furthermore, we analyze the heat flux, fin efficiency, and the entropy generation.