• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

When implementing butt joint welding of two plates, it is useful to attach end-tabs made of a metal with high heat conductivity (e.g., copper) at the front and back sides of the welded plates to prevent the bead from rolling down and prevent defects that may occur at the tips of the weld zone. In this study, the fin shape, which is known to have good heat discharging characteristics by natural convection, has been applied to enhance the cooling performance of the end-tab. From both experiment and numerical analysis, it was confirmed that end-tabs with fin-shaped holes have better heat discharging performance than end-tabs without holes. Through thermal and fluid flow analysis, the cooling rates of end-tabs with different hole shapes were estimated in order to figure out characteristics of shape factor that are important for the heat discharging performance. As a result, we found that the structure including vertical fins with optimal fin gap was the best-performing shape.