CRITICAL RADIUS OF

INSULATION
Prepared by: Guided by:
Shah Naitik R. Prof. B.S.Patel Sir
15ME033

1
 Critical Radius of insulation is a very important
aspect regarding industrial application.
 Any thing which is critical means it is on it’s
optimum or decisive state. So, basically here
Critical radius means the decisive or optimum
radius of insulation for which we get the
maximum rate of heat transfer.
 Concept of this critical radius of insulation can
be understood nicely by starting with the
understanding of basics of insulator and it’s
material.

2
 INSULATOR
A material which retards the flow of heat
with reasonable effectiveness is known
as Insulation.
 It serves the following two purposes:
 It prevents the heat flow from system to
the surroundings.
 It prevents the heat flow from the
surroundings to the system.
3
 EXPRESSION FOR CRITICAL RADIUS
 Let us consider a
small pipe, tube,
cable or wire, of
radius rt and the
outside surface of
which has a constant
temperature Tt and
dissipates heat by
convection into
surrounding air.
4
 Let the surface be covered with a layer of
insulation of radius ro and a surface
coefficient ho for heat transfer to the
atmosphere at temperature to.
 It is desired to examine the variation in heat
loss from the tube surface as the thickness
of insulation is changed.
 For cylinder the rate of heat transfer,

5
 From the equation It is clear that as
Insulation is added To the tube, the Outer
expose Surface temperature will decrease
because of Higher conduction resistance,
but at the same time the surface area
Available for convection heat dissipation
will Increase causing more heat loss. These
two opposing effects lead to an optimum
insulation thickness.

6
• So, rcr = ki / ho is the Critical radius for the
cylinder.
• The variation of heat transfer rate with
increase of radius of insulation is as shown
below. 7
• If ro < (ro)cr, as ro increases, Q increases till
ro = (ro)cr .
• If ro > (ro)cr , as ro increases, Q decreases. If
ro > (ro)cr , any increase of insulation will
decrease the rate of heat transfer and If ro
< (ro)cr , the increase of insulation will
8
  EFFECT OF INSULATION
 For pipes, ro is taken higher than (ro)cr, so
that any insulation added will only decrease
the heat loss from the pipes. For wires and
cables, is kept lower than (ro)cr so that
insulation Added increases the heat loss
from the wire or cable. An insulated small
diameter wire has a higher current carrying
capacity than an uninsulated one.
9
 If the current flowing through an
uninsulated wire increases I2R increases,
and if the heat dissipation from the wire is
not equal to I2R the temperature of wire
goes on increasing till it exceeds to the
melting point and the wire snaps.
 If the wire is insulated, it can dissipate
more heat (till rt = (ro)cr) and the wire
temperature remains below the melting
point.

10
 CRITICAL RADIUS OF SPHERE
 The expression for the critical radius of
insulation for the sphere ,

 It can be obtained by same methodology

used for cylinder.

11
 REFRENCES
 “ Heat & Mass Transfer ” By P.K.Nag
 “ Heat and Mass Transfer: Fundamentals
and Application ” By Yunus Cengel
 “ Heat and Mass Transfer “ By R.K.Rajput

12
THANK YOU

13