ABSTRACT
The analysis of steady-state heat transfer problems is often less complicated and less time consuming than the analysis of transient heat transfer problems. Steady-state heat transfer occurs when the change in energy stored within the system is practically constant. The thermal diffusivity gives a measure of how rapidly energy can “diffuse” into the material compared with the energy storage capacity of the material. To determine the amount of coolant required to cool a plate from ambient temperature to the operating temperature of the system, the total energy transferred Et through the surface of the plate must be known. The use of Laplace transforms for certain problems is more computationally effective than some of the direct solution methods, especially for cases in which one of the independent variables extends to very large values or to infinity. The execution of the numerical solution for the explicit formulation is straight-forward— a “marching” solution.
