Employing extended surfaces, or 'fins', are, undoubtedly the most widely used method for dissipation of excess heat generated in reciprocating and rotary machine components. Moreover, the amount of heat extracted by a fin from the machine surface depends, to a great extent, on the cross-sectional shape. This research, aims at studying the said dependence of a fin's thermal dissipation capacity on its geometry. For simplicity, the most commonly used cylindrical pin fin, or spine, was used as a standard and the characteristics of three alternative shapes were compared against those of the former. Furthermore, to prove the consistency of the trend, experiments were carried out on two materials- aluminum and copper. Numerical simulation included the CFD analysis of the problem using ANSYS Fluent v13. The results obtained through both the approaches were compared against each other and those available from the surveyed literature. The investigation helps understand how fin shapes affect their behavior and could lend an insight into realizing the utility of each fin from a designer's perspective.

1. Heat Transfer Simulation by CFD from Fins of an Air Cooled Motorcycle Engine under Varying Climatic Conditions - Pulkit Agarwal, Mayur Shrikhande.
2. Fundamentals of Heat & Mass Transfer - Incropera, DeWitt, Bergman, Lavine
3. Heat & Mass Transfer - D. S. Kumar
4. Heat transfer through extended surfaces subject to variable heat transfer coefficient Esmail M. A. Mokheimer
5. Experimental and computational analysis and Optimization for heat transfer through fins with different types of notch - S. H. Barhatte, M. R. Chopade, V. N. Kapatkar Journal of Engineering Research and Studies,M11
6. Optimization of the Design Process for an Automotive Air Cooling System –Dhritiman Subha Kashyap, University of California San Diego, Dec 2007
7. Performance of annular fins with different profiles subject to variable heat transfer coefficient - Esmail M. A. Mokheimer.

Rotary Machine Cross Sectional Shape Numerical Simulator