Transient Conduction in a Sphere with Convective

Boundary Conditions
Why do you need a thermometer to cook a turkey?

Common sense tells us that when you put a cold

turkey into a hot oven it takes time for the center of the
turkey to heat up sufficiently to cook the meat.

Why do you burn your mouth when you eat pizza?

Although the crust has cooled enough for you to pick

it up, the sauce and cheeze below the surface of the
pizza are still very hot.

The general problem:

The analysis described on this page provides a simple

mathematical model for these everyday problems. The
details of these two situations are rather complicated:
the ``material'' has very nonuniform thermal
properties, both heat and moisture are being
exchanged with the surroundings, and the initial
temperature is not uniform. To a first approximation,
however, we can think of the turkey as a sphere of
uniform material, and the pizza a infinite slab of
material. These assumptions reduce the problem to
that of analyzing one-dimensional transient heat
conduction with convective boundary conditions.

The rate at which heat is transfered to or from the

object is also influenced by the convective boundary
condition, i.e. the resistance to heat flow at the surface
of the object. The most generic example of this
situation is the heating or cooling of a sphere of
uniform material. We consider the case where the
sphere is initially at a uniform temperature, and at an
instant it is immersed in a stream of flowing fluid at a
different temperature.

Contents:

Overview
Describes the physical background and some
of the nomenclature.
Lumped Analysis
Transient solution for a highly conductive or
 small radius sphere. In this case (Bi < 0.1)
there is a neglible temperature gradient inside
the sphere and the temperature is governed by
a simple exponential decay.
Transient with Radial Temperature Variation
Transient solution when the radial temperature
gradient is important.

Overview

The remainder of this page deals with the physical experiment depicted in the sketch below. A
sphere of uniform material is intially at some temperature Th. (Suppose, for example, that it
has been stored inside a warm oven for a sufficient period of time.) The sphere is then moved
to a different environment in which a flow of fluid (say air or water) at another temperature
Tc < Th washes over the sphere.

The moving fluid provides convective cooling of the sphere. The thermophysical properties
of the sphere and the effectiveness of the convective cooling determine the internal
temperature distribution of the sphere as it cools.

If the material has a high thermal conductivity (i.e. if it is a ``good'' conductor of heat) and if
the convective cooling is relatively weak (e.g. if the fluid velocity is low) then the internal
temperature of the sphere will be relatively uniform. In other words there will be little
difference in temperature between the surface and the center of the sphere.

On the other hand if the material has a low conductivity and if the convective cooling is
strong then the internal temperature of the sphere will not be uniform. This is the case
qualitatively represented by the color distribution in the sphere on the right hand side of the
preceding sketch. A non-uniform temperature distribution means that there is a significant
difference in temperature between the center (red <--> warm) and the surface (blue/green <--
> cool) of the sphere.

The following section introduces some terms that enable a quantitative analysis of the cooling
sphere.

Terminology

 Biot number, dimensionless surface resistance

h R
Bi = -----
k

where h is the heat transfer coefficient, R is the radius of the sphere, and k is the
thermal conductivity of the sphere.
  Fourier number, dimensionless time
a t
Fo = -----
2
R

where a (alpha) is the thermal diffusivity of the sphere, t is the time, and R is the
radius of the sphere.
 theta, dimensionless temperature
T(r,t) - Tfluid
theta = -----------------
Ti - Tfluid

where T(r,t) is the temperature in the sphere, Tfluid is the temperature of the
surrounding fluid, and Ti is the uniform, initial temperature of the sphere.

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Lumped Analysis

When the sphere has a small Bi number, specifically when Bi < 0.1, the radial temperature
variation is negligible compared to the temperature difference between the surrounding fluid
and the surface of the sphere. In this case the sphere responds as a lumped mass.

The transient temperature response is

theta = exp( - t/tau )

where tau = rho*c*V/(h*A) is the time constant for the sphere. Substituting the definitions of
Bi and Fo into the temperature response formula gives
theta = exp( - 3*Bi*Fo )

The following figure shows the dimensions temperature response.

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Transient with Radial Temperature Variation

For large Bi numbers the thermal resistance of the surface is small compared to the internal
thermal resistance of the sphere. The result is a small temperature drop at the surface (Tfluid -
T(R,t)), and a relatively large temperature variation between the surface and the center of the
sphere.

The following plot shows the radial temperature variation at three different times (three
different Fo values) for a sphere with Bi = 10. The intial temperature variation (Fo = 0) is
uniform --- this is the initial condition.

The next plot displays the transient cooling as measured by a two thermocouples, one at the
center and the other on the surface of the sphere.

Now imagine that you could install lots and lots of thermocouples throughout the interior of
the sphere. Ignoring the practical difficulties of this arrangement, such an experiment would
create a much more complete picture of the temperature response.

The following animation simulates the temperature response of all points in the sphere. The
temperature is indicated by the color: dark red is hot (theta = 1) and dark blue is cold (theta =
0). The color bar on the right gives the mapping between temperature and color.

N.B. The background is green because, well, because I haven't figured out how to tweak the background to be a
neutral color like gray. It's not hard, I know, but .... Until that is fixed, be aware that the surrounding fluid is at
theta = 0. (I could set the background color to be dark blue, but then the sphere would disappear as t approached
infinity).

To start the animation press the small right triangle in the lower left corner of the image. The
buttons in the lower right corner of the image can be used to advance or rewind one frame at
at time. The slider bar on the bottom of the image can also be used to move forward and
backward through the animation.

Send questions and comments via email to gerry

A description of the MATLAB code used to generate these results is available on this page.

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18.3 Transient Heat Transfer (Convective Cooling or
Heating)
All the heat transfer problems we have examined have been steady state, but there are often
circumstances in which the transient response to heat transfer is critical. An example is the
heating up of gas turbine compressors as they are brought up to speed during take-off. The
disks that hold the blades are large and take a long time to come to temperature, while the
casing is thin and in the path of high velocity compressor flow and thus comes to temperature
rapidly. The result is that the case expands away from the blade tips, sometimes enough to
cause serious difficulties with aerodynamic performance.

To introduce the topic as well as to increase familiarity with modeling of heat transfer
problems, we examine a lumped parameter analysis of an object cooled by a stream. This will
allow us to see what the relevant non-dimensional parameters are and, at least in a qualitative
fashion, how more complex heat transfer objects will behave. We want to view the object as a
``lump'' described by a single parameter. We need to determine when this type of analysis

would be appropriate. To address this, consider the temperature difference between

two locations in the object, as shown in Figure 18.6.

Figure 18.6: Temperature variation in an object cooled by a flowing fluid

If the heat transfer within the body and from the body to the fluid are of the same magnitude,

where is a relevant length scale, say half the thickness of the object. The ratio of the
temperature difference is

(18..14)

If the Biot number is small the ratio of temperature differences described in Equation (18.14)

is also . We can thus say and

neglect the temperature non-uniformity within the object.

The approximation made is to view the object as having a spatially uniform temperature that

is a function of time only. Explicitly, . The first law applied to the object is (using

the fact that for solids ),

 (18..15)

where is the density of the object and is its volume. In terms of heat transferred to the

fluid, . The rate of heat transfer to the fluid is , so the

expression for the time evolution of the temperature is

(18..16)

The initial temperature, , is equal to some known value, which we can call . Using
this, Equation (18.16) can be written in terms of a non-dimensional temperature difference

(18..17)

At time , this non-dimensional quantity is equal to one. Equation (18.17) is an equation

you have seen before, which has the solution . For the present
problem the form is

(18..18)

The constant can be seen to be equal to unity to satisfy the initial condition. This form of
equation implies that the solution has a heat transfer ``time constant'' given by

The time constant, , is in accord with our intuition, or experience; high density, large
volume, or high specific heat all tend to increase the time constant, while high heat transfer
coefficient and large area will tend to decrease the time constant. This is the same form of
equation and the same behavior you have seen for the R-C circuit, as shown schematically in
Figure 18.7. The time dependence of the voltage in the R-C circuit when the switch is opened
suddenly is given by the equation
There are, in fact, a number of physical processes which have (or can be modeled as having)
this type of exponentially decaying behavior.

Figure 18.7: Voltage change in an R-C circuit

Muddy Points

In equation (18.15), what is ? (MP 18.5)

In the lumped parameter transient heat transfer problem, does a high density ``slow down''
heat transfer? (MP 18.6)