What is Heat Transfer?

“Energy in transit due to temperature difference.”

Difference between thermodynamics and heat transfer:

Thermodynamics tells us:
• How much heat is transferred (δQ)
• How much work is done (δW) FIGURE 1:
We are normally interested in
• Final state of the system how long it takes for the hot
coffee in a thermos to cool to a
Heat transfer tells us: certain temperature, which
cannot be determined from a
▪ How (with what modes) δQ is transferred thermodynamic analysis alone

▪ At what rate δQ is transferred

▪ Temperature distribution inside the body Heat Transfer Complementary Thermodynamics
 Application Areas of Heat Transfer:
✔ Energy production and conversion
steam: power plant, solar energy
conversion etc.
✔ Refrigeration and air-conditioning
✔ Domestic applications: ovens,
stoves, toaster
✔ Cooling of electronic equipment
✔ Manufacturing/materials processing:
welding, casting, soldering, laser
machining
✔ Automobiles / aircraft design
✔ Nature (weather, climate etc.)
 Modes of Heat Transfer
CONDUCTION: An energy transfer across a system boundary due to a temperature
difference by the mechanism of intermolecular interactions. Conduction needs
matter and does not require any bulk motion of matter.
OR
Conduction may be viewed as the transfer of energy from the more energetic to
the less energetic particles of a substance due to interactions between the
particles.
Conduction can take place in solids, liquids, or gases.
In gases and liquids, conduction is due to the collisions and diffusion of the
molecules during their random motion.
In solids, it is due to the combination of vibrations of the molecules in a
 CONDUCTION

FIGURE: Association of conduction heat

transfer with diffusion of energy due to
molecular activity.
FIGURE : The mechanisms of heat conduction in
different phases of a substance.
 CONDUCTION
✔ Higher temperatures are associated with higher molecular energies, and when neighboring

molecules collide, as they are constantly doing, a transfer of energy from the more energetic to

the less energetic molecules must occur.

✔ In the presence of a temperature gradient, energy transfer by conduction must then occur in the

direction of decreasing temperature.

✔ In liquids, although the molecules are more closely spaced and the molecular interactions are

stronger and more frequent.

✔ Similarly, in a solid, conduction may be attributed to atomic activity in the form of lattice

vibrations.
 CONDUCTION
The rate of heat conduction through a medium depends on the geometry of
the medium, its thickness, and the material of the medium, as well as the
temperature difference across the medium.
The rate of heat conduction through a plane layer is proportional to the
temperature difference across the layer and the heat transfer area, but is
inversely proportional to the thickness of the layer. That is,

FIGURE: Heat conduction through a large

plane wall of thickness x and area A.
where the constant of proportionality k is the thermal conductivity of the
material, which is a measure of the ability of a material to conduct heat. In
the limiting case of Δx→0, the equation above reduces to the differential form:
 CONDUCTION

Fourier law of heat

conduction

✔ Here dT/dx is the temperature gradient, which is the slope of the

temperature curve on a T-x diagram (the rate of change of T with x), at
location x.
✔ The relation above indicates that the rate of heat conduction in a direction
is proportional to the temperature gradient in that direction.
✔ Heat is conducted in the direction of decreasing temperature, and the
temperature gradient becomes negative when temperature decreases with
increasing x.
✔ The negative sign ensures that heat transfer in the positive x direction is a

FIGURE: The rate of heatpositive quantity.

conduction through a
solid is directly proportional to its thermal
 Thermal Conductivity
✔ Thermal conductivity of a material can
be defined as the rate of heat transfer
through a unit thickness of the material
per unit area per unit temperature
difference.
✔ The thermal conductivity of a material is
a measure of the ability of the material
to conduct heat.
✔ A high value for thermal conductivity
indicates that the material is a good
heat conductor, and a low value
 Thermal Conductivity

FIGURE: Experimental setup to FIGURE: The range of thermal conductivity of various materials
determine the thermal conductivity of at room temperature.
Thermal Conductivity

The variation of thermal conductivity over certain

temperature ranges is negligible for some materials,
but significant for others. The thermal conductivities
of certain solids exhibit dramatic increases at
temperatures near absolute zero, when these solids
become superconductors.
Thermal Conductivity
• The temperature
dependence of thermal
conductivity causes
considerable complexity in
conduction analysis.
Therefore, it is common
practice to evaluate the
thermal conductivity k at the
average temperature and
treat it as a constant in
calculations.
• In heat transfer analysis, a
material is normally
assumed to be isotropic; that
is, to have uniform properties
in all directions.
FIGURE: The variation of the
thermal conductivity of various
solids, liquids, and gases with
 Thermal Diffusivity
Another material property that appears in the transient heat conduction analysis is the thermal
diffusivity, which represents how fast heat diffuses through a material and is defined as:

✔ The thermal conductivity k represents how well a material conducts heat, and the heat capacity
Cp represents how much energy a material stores per unit volume.
✔ Therefore, the thermal diffusivity of a material can be viewed as the ratio of the heat conducted
through the material to the heat stored per unit volume.
✔ A material that has a high thermal conductivity or a low heat capacity will obviously have a large
thermal diffusivity.
✔ The larger the thermal diffusivity, the faster the propagation of heat into the medium.
✔ A small value of thermal diffusivity means that heat is mostly absorbed by the material and a
small amount of heat will be conducted further.
Thermal Diffusivity
 Convection
Convection: Convection is the mode of energy transfer between a solid surface and the
adjacent liquid or gas that is in motion, and it involves the combined effects of conduction and
fluid motion. The faster the fluid motion, the greater the convection heat transfer. In the absence of
any bulk fluid motion, heat transfer between a solid surface and the adjacent fluid is by pure
conduction.

FIGURE:The cooling
of a boiled egg by
forced and natural
FIGURE: Heat transfer from a hot surface to air by convection convection
 Convection
Convection is called forced convection if the fluid is forced to flow over the surface by external
means such as a fan, pump, or the wind.
In contrast, convection is called natural (or free) convection if the fluid motion is caused by
buoyancy forces that are induced by density differences due to the variation of temperature in
the fluid
Despite the complexity of convection, the rate of convection heat transfer is observed to be
proportional to the temperature difference, and is conveniently expressed by Newton’s law of
cooling as

where: q = heat flow from surface, a scalar, (W)

h = heat transfer coefficient (which is not a thermodynamic property of the material, but may depend on
geometry of surface, flow characteristics, thermodynamic properties of the fluid, etc. (W/m 2 K)
As = Surface area from which convection is occurring. (m2 )
ΔT = T s -T∞ (Temperature Difference between surface and coolant) (K)
Convection
 Radiation
Radiation: Radiation heat transfer involves the transfer of heat by electromagnetic radiation
that arises due to the temperature of the body. Radiation does not need matter.
Emissive power of a surface:
E = σεTs4 (W/m2 )
where: ε = emissivity, which is a surface property (ε = 1
is black body)
σ = Stefan Boltzmann constant = 5.67 x 10-8 W/m 2 K 4
Ts = Absolute temperature of the surface (K)
The above equation is derived from Stefan Boltzmann
law, which describes a gross heat emission rather than
heat transfer.
Radiation
 Absorptivity

Another important radiation property of a surface is its absorptivity a,

which is the fraction of the radiation energy incident on a surface that is
absorbed by the surface. Like emissivity, its value is in the range 0 ≤ a≤ 1.
A blackbody absorbs the entire radiation incident on it. That is, a blackbody
is a perfect absorber as it is a perfect emitter.

Kirchhoff’s law of radiation states that the emissivity and the

absorptivity of a surface at a given temperature and wavelength are equal.