ME 409

Computational Lab
Heat Conduction

Prof. Asim Tewari

TA – Deepak Soman
Introduction
Classification of conduction heat transfer problem
Fourier’s Law
General Relation for Fourier’s Law of Heat
Conduction
Heat Generation
1D Heat Conduction Equation
Boundary and Initial Condition
(i) Specified Temperature Boundary Condition
(ii)Specified Heat Flux Boundary Condition
(ii)Specified Heat Flux Boundary Condition
Insulated Boundary: Two Special Cases
(iii)Convection Boundary Condition
(iv)Radiation Boundary Condition
 (v) Interface Boundary Condition

• Perfect interface contact

T1 | xxi  T2 | xxi
q1  q2
• Imperfect interface contact
(T1  T2 )
q1  q2 
R
R is the thermal interface resistance
Alternate derivation of
the heat equation
Constitutive Equation: The Heat Flux

Fourier’s Law
Numerical solution to the Heat Equation
 Numerical formulation
• Partial Differential Equation is replaced by a discrete
approximation.
• Both space and time are discretized.
• The PDE is solved in spatial domain for a given time step
and iterated for future times.
• Finer discretization leads to better approximation,
however at the expenseof more computation time.
Numerical formulation in 2D
Computational mesh
• Rectangular cell (I, j) of size
xi by yj ,
• Ti,j is the temperature in the
midpoint of cell (i, j) at the
considered time-step
 Numerical formulation in 2D
Thermal conductances
• Conductance per unit length
perpendicular to the (x, y)-plane
between the two cells (i-1,j) and (I, j) is
Ki-1/2, (W/(m.K))

• Here x I,j is the thermal conductivity in

the x-direction for cell (I,j) and Ri-1/2,j
(m2K/W) is the thermal resistance at the
interface between cells (i-1,j) and (I, j).
• For the cell (1, j) lying at the boundary
this becomes
 Numerical formulation in 2D
Heat Flows
• The four heat flows associated with an
internal cell are given by the following
generic equation:

Boundary conditions
Heat flow through a boundary cell is
determined by the boundary condition.
• Temperature Boundary Condition:

• Heat flux Boundary Condition:

 Numerical formulation in 2D
New Temperature
• The increase of the energy for an internal cell during time-step ∆t is given
by the energy balance below. If Ti,j is the old temperature of cell (i, j), and
Ti,jnew is the new one, then:

Where Ii,j (W/m3) is the heat generation in cell (i, j) .Thus the new
temperature would be:

Choice of time-step
• The stable time-step ∆t for cell (i, j) is determined from the following
stability criterion:
 Lab Assignment-1 (ME-409)
• Solve thefollowing transient heat conduction problem by finite
difference method in Python (using Jupyter notebook and matplotlib).
Boundary conditions at t>0
T=100

T=10 T=100

T=100

• The domain is a square of unit length.

• Initial condition: Domain is initially at a constant Temperature =10.
• At t>0 the right/top/bottom BCs are activated.
• The thermal conductivity of the materials is a linear function of temperature given as :
K(T) = K0 (1 + βT)
• Solve the above 2D problem in Python by varying β as +ve, -ve and zero.
• Compare the results to FEM steady state solution (using COMSOL).