Chapter 5 Numerical Methods in Heat Conduction

For problems with large temperature differences the thermal conductivity is normally temperature dependent. There are two approaches to obtaining the finite difference equations; the first is to start with the differential equation and break it down into the difference equation. The second approach is to apply the conservation principles to the situation and obtain the difference equations. The domain is divided into finite number of elements node centered and solution is obtained at the node. The temperature of the element is evaluated at the node and the change between two nodes is linear change. The thermal conductivity and the area of heat transfer is evaluated at the interface between two elements. After you arrive at the complete set of numerical algebraic equations you can solve the system using subroutines, inverse matrix or an iterative procedure. To calculate the heat of flow after getting the temperature distribution; there are two ways to do that. One way is to do energy balance on the first half element in the fin problem; the other is to fit a polynomial and use the definition of the flow rate. At the tip of the fin it is assumed that the temperature of the element is Tm To evaluate the heat convicted away from the element we take the average temperature which is here the node temperature.