Heat Transfer Third Year Dr.Aysar T.

Jarullah

Steady-State Conduction One Dimension

To examine the applications of Fourier’s law of heat conduction to calculation of heat flow in
some simple one-dimensional systems, we may take the following different cases:

1- The plane wall

A) One material

Using Fourier’s law

T1 q

dT q
q  kA by  
dx T2

T  T1
q   kA 2 x1 x2
x 2  x1 x

potential (Driving Force)

Flow 
Resistance

V
I
R

x
  ThermalResistance
kA

 When the thermal conductivity is considered constant



 When the thermal conductivity varies with temperature, the k can be described as

k0 and β are constants. The resultant equation for the heat flow is
Heat Transfer Third Year Dr.Aysar T. Jarullah

B) More than one material (Composite wall)

T1
T2
T3

T4

The heat flow must be the same through all sections, therefore,

Solving these three equations simultaneously, the heat flow is written:

For series and parallel one-dimensional heat transfer through a composite wall and electrical
analog:

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
 ;    ;  ;  
R1 R A R 2 R B RC R D R3 R E R 4 R F RG
1 1 1 1 1
    
Rth R1 R 2 R3 R4
(Rth is the thermal resistances)

Generally, one-dimensional heat-flow equation for this type of problem may be written
Heat Transfer Third Year Dr.Aysar T. Jarullah

2- Radial systems

A) Cylindrical

i- One material

Consider a long cylinder of inside radius ri, outside radius ro,

and length L. The inner side temperature is Ti, The outer side is T0,
when the heat flows only in a radial direction.
The area for heat flow in the cylindrical system is

Ar  2rL
So that Fourier's law is written

dT
qr  kAr
dr
or

dT
q r  2 krL
dr

r T
q 0 dr 0

2 kL ri r
   dT
Ti

The solution is

ii- Multi-Layer cylindrical wall

Heat Transfer Third Year Dr.Aysar T. Jarullah

For the system shown, the solution is:

B) Spherical

Spherical systems may also be treated as one-dimensional when the

temperature is a function of radius only. The heat flow is then

dT Ar  4 r 2
qr  kAr
dr
or
dT
q r  4k r 2
dr
r T
d 0 dr 0

4 k ri r 2
   dT
Ti

The thermal resistance in spherical system is:

1 1 1 
Rth    
4k  ri r0 

Example) An outside wall of a building consists of 0.1m layer of common brick [k=0.69
W/m.K] and 25mm layer of fiber glass [k=o.o5 W/m.K]. Calculate the heat flow with
through the wall for a 45°C temperature differences.

Solution

T Toverall
q 
 Rth xb  x f
kb A k f A
45
 q  69.78 W/m 2
0.1 0.025

0.69 0.05