STEADY AND UNSTEADY HEAT CONDUCTION

Essay 4
4.1 Steady-State Heat Conduction
The steady-state condition

can be conveniently rephrased as:

(4.1)

Equivalently,
(4.2)
For the vast majority of heat conduction problems, the emphasis is on rates of heat transfer
rather than on amounts of heat transferred. Therefore, Eq. (4.2) is the starting point of further
analysis for steady-state heat transfer.
To implement Eq. (4.2), it is convenient to make reference to Fig. 4.1. That figure shows a solid
of arbitrary shape through which heat is passing. Also seen in the figure is a very small volume
of dimensions , , and . It is this volume, called a control volume, to which Eq. (4.2) will
be applied.

Fig. 4.1 A solid of arbitrary shape across which heat is passing

4.1

For the application of this heat balance equation, it is useful to enlarge the control volume and to
focus attention on its individual faces. Figure 4.2 shows enlarged views of left-hand and righthand faces of the control volume.

Fig. 4.2 Enlarged views of the faces of the control volume. (a) left-hand face and (b) right-hand face

In the figure, the symbol

is used to denote the derivative
heat flow in the direction.

. The subscript

indicates a

The rate of heat transfer crossing the left-hand face follows from Eq. (3.10) as:
(4.3)
In this equation, the area across which heat is flowing is the face area
. The subscript
that is appended to the derivative indicates that it is to be evaluated at the location
.
Next, in a manner analogous to Eq. (4.3), the rate at which heat crosses the right-hand face is:
(4.4)
It is useful, at this point, to determine the net rate of heat outflow for the
quantity is obtained by differencing Eqs. (4.4) and (4.3), so that:

direction. This

(4.5)
If use is made of the definition of the derivative:
(4.6)
then,
(4.7)
A similar derivation yields:
4.2

(4.8)
(4.9)
Equation (4.2) requires that for steady state, there is no net heat transfer at the chosen control
volume. This means that the sum of Eqs. (4.7) to (4.9) be zero, which leads to:
(4.10)
This equation is very famous and is encountered in many physical processes beside heat
conduction. It is called Laplaces equation. It is, in fact, the most investigated equation in all of
mathematics. There are many elegant solution methods that have been employed to solve
Laplaces equation. Those methods are taught in a graduate course on heat conduction. However,
no matter what the level of mathematical knowledge, it is possible to obtain analytical solutions
for the Laplaces equation only for the most simple shapes and
boundary conditions.
Laplaces equation can also be written in vector form as:
(4.11)
The operator
takes different forms for different coordinate
systems. For Cartesian coordinates:
(4.12)
In cylindrical coordinates, the expression for this operator is:

Fig. 4.3 Pierre Simon de Laplace

(1749-1827)

(4.13)
where

is the radial coordinate,

is the angular coordinate, and

is the axial coordinate.

There is a large class of problems in which the temperature does not depend on the angular
coordinate . Such problems are called axisymmetric. The steady-state heat conduction in
axisymmetric situations is governed by:
(4.14)

4.2 Unsteady Heat Conduction

When the temperature varies with time in a solid material, there will be a corresponding variation
of the rates of heat transfer within the solid and at its boundary. In such situations, the change of

4.3

internal energy in a given time interval will no longer be zero as it was in the steady state.
Attention may be redirected to the First Law, Eq. (3.11). The time is related to the time by:
(4.15)
Over this small time interval, the change of internal energy must be very small. In this light, Eq.
(3.11) may be rewritten as:
(4.16)
In writing this equation, the work transfer has been omitted. The quantity
small quantity of heat, but it cannot be represented by
, since

represents a very

(4.17)
However, the quantities
and
heat at state 1 or at state 2.

have no physical meaning since the object does not possess

Since our focus is now on timewise variations, it is convenient to rewrite Eq. (4.16) as:
(4.18)
In this equation,

is the net rate of heat inflow into the control volume.

Equations (4.7-9), when summed, represent the net rate of outflow from the control volume. By
reversing the sum and using Eq. (4.18), the unsteady equation for heat conduction emerges as:
(4.19)
The internal energy is equal to the specific internal energy times the mass within the control
volume. In turn, the mass is equal to the density of the material times the volume
.
With this information:
(4.20)
From thermodynamics,
(4.21)
The introduction of Eqs. (4.20) and (4.21) into the First Law, Eq. (4.19), there is obtained:
(4.22)

4.4

This general equation for unsteady heat conduction can be specialized to solids (
result:

) with the

(4.23)
where
has been defined in Eqs. (4.12) and (4.13) for Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates,
respectively.
In many textbooks and, in particular, mathematics texts on differential equations, Eq. (4.23) is
written as:
(4.24)
In this equation,
is the thermal diffusivity whose units are
dimensional form of this equation:

or

. The one-

(4.25)
is called the heat equation by mathematicians.

4.5