On Heat Transfer of a Two-Step Radiating Slab of Variable Thermal Conductivity

Abstract

An investigation of heat transfers in a combustible stockpile whose materials are of variable thermal conductivity is conducted in this article. The stockpile is modeled in rectangular slap and a two-step exothermic chemical reaction responsible for the combustion process is assumed. The reactive slab is also assumed to lose heat to the ambient by radiation. The Runge-Kutta Fehlberg (RKF45) method coupled with the Shooting technique is applied to tackle numerically the nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) governing the problem. The process of heat transfer during combustion is made easy to understand by investigating effects of selected thermo-physical parameters on the system’s temperature. The results show that some thermo-physical parameters accelerate the exothermic chemical reaction and therefore raise the temperature levels, and that others help to reduce heat release rate to lower the temperature profiles. The graphs for the results are plotted and discussed accordingly.