Fins are commonly applied for heat management in electrical appliances such as computer power supplies or substation transformers. Vertical plate fins have been conventionally adopted to enhance the heat transfer from a vertical heated plate. The main function of these fins is not to increase the heat transfer rate itself, but to enlarge the effective heat transfer area. In order to obtain a high level of heat transfer performance with these fins, the surface area of the fins should be far larger than that of the base plate. For the enhancement of Natural convection from vertical heated plates, mostly vertical rectangular fins are used. But these fins are inapplicable for tall vertical plate. This can be explained as the boundary layer developed over the tall vertical plate becomes very thick, and the fins must be much higher than the boundary layer thickness in order to obtain a significant improvement in heat transfer. However, such high fins are no longer practical. Therefore, a new enhancing technique is needed to be developed for natural convection.

This paper discusses the efforts of earlier researchers for heat transfer enhancement in natural convection and a proposal for further investigations. In order to enhance the heat transfer, V-fins are to be attached to the base plate with the edges faced downstream and in a layout of an array. The V-Fins will then be blackened in order to increase the radiative heat transfer.