ABSTRACT
A thermal system is one in which thermal energy is stored or transferred. The mathematical model of a thermal system is often complicated because of the complex temperature distribution throughout the system. Partial, rather than ordinary, differential equations are required for precisely analyzing such a distributed-parameter system. This topic is beyond the scope of this text. To simplify analysis, a lumped-parameter model, rather than a distributed-parameter model governed by ordinary differential equations, may be used to approximate the dynamics of the system.
