Long-Time Solutions to Heat-Conduction Transients with Time-Dependent Inputs

Abstract

An economical method for obtaining long-time solutions to one, two, or three-dimensional heat-conduction transients with time-dependent forcing functions is presented. The conduction problem is spatially discretized by finite differences or by finite elements to obtain a system of first-order ordinary differential equations. The time-dependent input functions are each approximated by continuous, piecewise-linear functions each having the same uniform time interval. A set of response coefficients is generated by which a long-time solution can be carried out with a considerably lower cost than for conventional methods. A one-dimensional illustrative example is included.