Lecture 16, Feb 9, 2004

Last Day
• Lumped Capacitance

Today
• Analytic Solutions
• Numerical Solutions
When can we use the lumped capacitance method?
When the Biot number is small ( < 0.1). Otherwise there will be temperature
variations in the solid, and we will be getting the energy transfer by convection wrong,
and hence the time it takes to heat/cool will be wrong.

appears in the exponential in the expression for Lumped Capacitance method. The
temperature of our part approaches the ambient temperature exponentially. If this term is
large, means that equilibrium will be reached quickly. If it is small this will take a longer
time.

This is like a time constant for our system, and can be related to another electric circuit
analogy. The thermal energy storage is like a capacitance in an electric circuit – hence
the name, the lumped capacitance method.

Or, We can express our problems in convenient non-dimensional forms

Where the length scale is as given Friday.

We can use the lumped capacitance method when Bi is small, but there are also other
approximations hidden in here
• h is often only known within 20% (Next section)
 • h is never constant around the entire part (recall the fins)
Therefore it will be approximate no matter what and Bi < 0.1 is a rough guideline.

Example using 2D unsteady conduction program developed in Matlab

Consider a cube of metal, initially at 100oC. The part is removed from an oven and
placed in air at T∞=30oC. The origin of our coordinate system is at the centre of the
cube, and because of symmetry we can examine the upper right quadrant only.

F
First, let us consider the case of Bi=0.005, where we expect the lumped capacitance
approximation to hold. Shown below are temperature contours at four different times as
the cube cools.
Is is clear from the above figure that when Bi is low, the part cools uniformly, and our
lumped capacitance model will be valid. Shown below is a plot of the variation of the
temperature at the centre of the cube, and at the upper right corner of the cube. Also
plotted is the variation of the area averaged temperature of the entire part.

Note that all three of these curves are virtually identical, clearly portraying that it is
appropriate to neglect temperature variations within the part.

If we increase Bi, however to 5.34 the situation changes considerably.

There are very clearly temperature gradients in the solid. If we look now at the time
variation of the temperatures at the same location as well as the average temperature, we
clearly see that the centre is at a very different temperature than the outside edge for
virtually all of the cooling process. When we do a lumped capacitance analysis, the
temperature we are using is the average temperature, which if there is no variation in
space, is also the temperature at the surface. When we misapply the lumped capacitance
method however, we are using the average temperature when we should be using the
surface temperature for the convection process. Consider the situation at t=500s for
example. The average temperature is approximately 50oC, while the surface temperature
is very close to 30oC. Using the average temperature would greatly over estimate the rate
of convective heat transfer, and this greatly accelerate the time to cool. As an exercise,
using the lumped capacitance method predict how long the part would take to cool, and
compare it to this numerical solution.
Analytic Solution (Section 5.5.1 in text)

We can also formulate analytic solutions to unsteady heat transfer problems which
involve temperature gradients within the solid.

Start with non-dimensionalization

The non-dimensional temperature will be a function of position, the Fourier number and
the Biot number.
We can derive a partial differential equation from conservation of energy, and apply the
boundary and initial conditions shown on the board. Using separation of variables, we
find the following solution.

This is a Fourier series solution, with the Fourier coefficients, Cn, given by

In order to solve this in actuality, we must evaluate the roots of the above transcendental
equation numerically. We can then solve the analytic expression for φ*and determine the
temperature distribution.
Considering the case of Bi =1 lets examine heat transfer through a one dimensional wall
initially at 30oC, and exposed suddenly to a hot airstream at 100oC. Again we can take
advantage of symmetry and examine only one half of the wall. This corresponds to
symmetry along the centreline, and hence the centreline behaves exactly as if it is
insulated. Fist lets look at a numerical solution, and then look at the above analytic
solution.
We can see that the temperature distribution is initially a straight line at 30oC. As the
x/L=1 end is exposed to the hot air, the temperature at that end heats up. Initally however
the centre of the wall (x/L=0) does not experience any increase in temperature as it takes
time for the heat energy to be conducted through the wall to the centre. Eventually
however the centre begins to heat as well and subsequent profiles are at increasingly
higher average temperatures. Eventually, the wall would reach a steady state where the
wall would be at a constant temperature of 100oC, but this is not shown in the above
figure. As the x/L position heats up, there is less and less convective heat transfer, and
the heat flux will decrease to zero at steady state.

The thing to note is that at early times, the temperature distribution has a significant
section that is a straight line. It is very difficult to represent a straight line by summing
up different sinusoidal functions, as is done in the Fourier series solution. The next figure
plots the first four terms in the analytical solution at some instant in time early in the
heating process. Each term in the Fourier series is plotted separately as well as the sum
of the first four terms which is our approximation to the non-dimensional temperature at
the time. It is clear that using enough terms we can come very close to a straight line, but
this will require at least these four terms.
Comparing to our numerical solution at two different times (Fo) we can see the problem.
In order to compare, we must first calculate the dimensional temperature from the non-
dimensional temperature shown above.
At early times, even four terms of the Fourier series are not enough to represent the
straight line section. At later times however, there is very good agreement between the
numerical and analytic solutions.

While analytic methods have problems representing straight lines in this case, they are
very good for validating numerical methods at later times. We can then have the
confidence to apply the numerical methods to more complex problems that we cannot
solve analytically at all. And, we can also use many more terms in our Fourier series to
improve solution at early times. Using eight terms in the Fourier series, we see
considerable improvement. We could continue to add terms, and continue to improve the
analytic solution.
In addition, the analytic solutions also greatly help to develop our intuition about heat
transfer problems.

Numerical Solutions

We have already seen how to develop the equations for numerical predictions of two
dimensional steady conduction. Next we shall focus how to approximate unsteady
conduction problems.
All we have to do is add the energy storage term to the method that we already
developed.

Discretizing (making a numerical approximation) of the storage term,

Where the subscript n+1 is at a time t + ∆t, and the subscript n is at a time t.

Recall from the previous section, that for steady two-dimensional conduction with no
generation, we found

Which can be expressed as

Examining the storage term, we find that we only need modify B and AP to include the
energy storage (unsteady) effects.
And we can easily march forward from a known time (n) to solve the system of equations
to get the temperature field at time (n+1). Note that we have made the choice to evaluate
the all the temperatures on the left hand side of the above equation at our new time (n+1).
When we do this, we must solve the entire system simultaneously. This is called an
implicit method because all of the temperatures are expressed in terms of the
neighbouring temperatures which are also unknown. We can also simplify the
computation, at least superficially, by solving for the temperature in each volume as a
function of the neighbouring temperatures at the previous time.

Each temperature can now be now be solved explicitly in terms of variables that are all
known from the solution at the previous time, and therefore, this is called an explicit
method. The problem with explicit methods is that they are not always stable which in
practice means that smaller time steps, ∆t, must often be used than are necessary to
capture the unsteady physics. This leads to significant extra computation even though a
matrix is never solved. In comparison, implicit methods are unconditionally stable which
means that even if your time step is too large to capture the physical time response, the
method will still generate a solution which conserves energy.