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1, JAN-JUN 2010
Abstract—This paper describes the numerical results of the used. Heat conduction problems could be divided into two
heat transfer from heat generating wire at different conditions categories: the steady state and the unsteady state. In a .three
by finite element method. The parametric effects on heat transfer dimensional heat conduction with internal heat generation
were investigated. The varied parameters included ambient
conditions, as well as the shape of the cross-section. The nu- problem, the unsteady state temperature distribution T(x, y,
merical results show that the type of the medium where the z,t) in a Cartesian coordinator system in the domain can be
heat generating wire immerges has strong effects on the heat- solved by the following differential equation’”:
dissipation rate. As the size of the diameter the heat dissipation to
the ambient is decreased. The effects of free convection conditions ∂T ∂ ∂T ∂ ∂T ∂ ∂T
on the wire surface are also significant. However, the effect of the
pc − k − k − k − Q = 0;
∂τ dx dx dy dy dz dz
shape of the cross-section is not very strong. The results presented (1)
in this paper provide useful information for the application of The equation is a heat balance equation, where t is time, k is
heat generating wire.
heat conductivity, p is the density, c is the heat capacity, and
Index Terms—Heat transfer, finite element, heat dissipation Q is the rate of the heat generated per volume from the heat
source of the material. The boundary conditions for solving
I. I NTRODUCTION this equation should meet the following conditions in the Ω
element method. In this study, the finite element method is Each term in Equations 3 and 4 can be expressed as
followings: The contribution of each cell to the matrix of heat
Dipak Parmar is with Department of Mechanical Engineering Institute
of technology Nirma University Ahmedabad-382481,India and Bhargav M. conduction:
Chavada is with G.H.Patel College of Engineering,V.V.Nagar 38xxxx, India R
dipakjparmar@nirmauni.ac.in
e
Kij = Qe k ∂N i ∂Ni ∂Ni ∂Ni
∂x ∂x + k ∂y ∂y ∂ Ω
NIRMA UNIVERSITTY JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL.1,NO.1, JAN-JUN 2010 31
Fig. 4. Temperature distribution in Heat Generating Wire Fig. 6. Effect of Free Convection
rate, the surface temperature is different at different medium. medium, free convection is considered, and the constant heat
The air and water has small heat conductivity, the corre- generation is considered.
sponding surface temperature is therefore higher. However,
the Mg brick’s heat conductivity is high, causing high heat C. The Effects of Materials
transfer rate between the wire and the Mg brick and thus Different material has different heat conductivity. Figure 5
low surface temperature of the wire. In general the smaller shows the effects of material of wires. It plots the relationship
the heat conductivity of the medium, the less heat transfers between the surface temperature and the thermal conductivity
between the wire and the medium. It is also clear that the for 6 different materials. The surface temperature decrease
surface temperature increases linearly with the heat generation. slightly with the increases of heat conductivity when the heat
However, the slope is different at different medium. The conductivity is less than 50 W/m.K and then show little effects
smaller the heat conductivity of the medium, the larger the afterwards.
slope, which indicates again less heat is transferred.
D. The Effects of Diameter
Figure 6 shows the effect of the diameter of the wire on the
surface temperature. For a given heat generation rate, when the
diameter increases, initially the surface temperature decreases
very rapidly and then the surface temperature decreases grad-
ually.