NUMERICAL METHODS IN

HEAT CONDUCTION
(Transient)

Dr. Mohammad Ilias Inam

Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering & Technology

Khulna University of Engineering & Technology

TRANSIENT HEAT CONDUCTION
 The finite difference solution of transient
problems requires discretization in time in
addition to discretization in space.
 This is done by selecting a suitable time step t
and solving for the unknown nodal temperatures
repeatedly for each t until the solution at the
desired time is obtained.
 In transient problems, the superscript i is used
as the index or counter of time steps, with i = 0
corresponding to the specified initial condition.

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 Explicit method: If temperatures at the previous
time step i is used.
 Implicit method: If temperatures at the new time
step i + 1 is used.

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Transient Heat Conduction in a Plane Wall

mesh Fourier number

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 No heat generation and  = 0.5

The temperature of an interior node at the

new time step is simply the average of the
temperatures of its neighboring nodes at the
previous time step.

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Stability Criterion for Explicit Method: Limitation on t
 The explicit method is easy to use, but it suffers from
an undesirable feature that severely restricts its utility:
the explicit method is not unconditionally stable, and
the largest permissible value of the time step t is
limited by the stability criterion.
 If the time step t is not sufficiently small, the
solutions obtained by the explicit method may
oscillate wildly and diverge from the actual solution.
 To avoid such divergent oscillations in nodal
temperatures, the value of t must be maintained
below a certain upper limit established by the stability
criterion.

Example

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The implicit method is unconditionally stable, and thus
we can use any time step we please with that method
(of course, the smaller the time step, the better the
accuracy of the solution).
The disadvantage of the implicit method is that it
results in a set of equations that must be solved
simultaneously for each time step.
Both methods are used in practice.

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 EXAMPLE

Explicit finite difference formulation

Node 1

Node 2

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Implicit finite difference formulation

Node 1

Node 2

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Two-Dimensional Transient Heat Conduction

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 Explicit
formulation

Stability criterion

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EXAMPLE

Node 1

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 Node 2

Node 3

Node 4

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Node 5

Node 6

Nodes 7, 8

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Node 9

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Node 0

Node 1,2,3

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 Node 0-5

Node 6

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For

Not steady

Steady (you need

computer)

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