Conduction of heat in a solid with a power law of heat transfer at its surface

Abstract

In many technical problems on conduction of heat involving convection, radiation, or evaporation at the surface of a body, the flux of heat at the surface is known empirically as a function of the surface temperature with reasonable accuracy. The thermal properties of the body also vary with the temperature, but in many cases the nature of this variation is completely unknown, and in others it is slight over the range of temperature involved. Thus it seems worth while studying problems on conduction of heat in a medium with constant thermal properties and with heat transfer at its surface a given function of the surface temperature. Mathematically such problems occupy an interesting position between the classical linear theory and the general case in which both the differential equation and the boundary conditions are non-linear.