ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief introduction to numerical heat transfer. Numerical solution methods are commonly used to analyze thermal engineering systems due to the rapidly increasing speed and capabilities of computers. The chapter describes the most widely used methods of computational heat transfer, including the finite difference, finite element, and finite volume methods. In addition, further methods have been developed for specific physical processes or categories of problems. The chapter highlights other methods based on the concepts of spectral elements, boundary elements, Monte Carlo methods, discrete ordinates, and high-resolution schemes. It examines the finite element method (FDM) in detail including two-dimensional formulations, triangular elements, quadrilateral elements, and time-dependent problems. The FDM is a powerful numerical method that is used in many branches of science and engineering including heat transfer, fluid mechanics, structural analysis, mass transfer, and electromagnetics. The method subdivides a problem domain into smaller subregions called finite elements.
