Simple model for heat loss in aluminium and copper bars

Jose Muñetón Dı́az

November 14, 2018

Abstract
The rate of cooling of aluminium and copper bars was investigated within the tempera-
ture range of 20◦ C-100◦ C. By placing the rods on a hot plate and measuring temperatures
at different points along their lengths, a simple model that relates the distance from the
heat source to the power flowing at such point was developed. The value for the ratios of
power entering the bars has a 4% difference with the theoretically predicted value of the
system, which is the ratio of the cross-sectional areas. The experimental model is based on
conduction principles, and shows evidence of Newton’s law of cooling and Stefan-Boltzmann
power law being present in the system studied.

1 Introduction
The knowledge of heat loss and heat transfer can potentially improve the quality of life in various
manners, such as in buildings and construction, where considerable energy saving on heating in
cold regions can be obtained when optimum insulation thickness is applied on walls[1]; or in
medical surgery, where lasers are pulsed in definite intervals of time which then enable heat to
diffuse and avoid thermal damage[2]. Another exciting application of heat transfer are metal
foams, which are a class of porous materials with special thermal properties that can be used to
construct more efficient heat exchangers[3], and to enhance storage of solar thermal energy[4].
By far, the simplest model that describes how a body loses heat from convection in not very
extreme conditions is Newton’s law of cooling. Newton experimentally observed and concluded
that the rate of temperature change of a body is proportional to the difference between its own
temperature and the temperature of the surroundings. Newton’s law can be found to be useful
in different areas of knowledge, like forensics, where it allows to estimate the time since death
happened[5]. Stefan-Boltzmann power law, on the other hand, explains thermal radiation, and
in doing so relates the surface area of a body, its emissivity, and as Newton’s law, a difference in
temperatures but with a power of four.
The aim of the present paper was to develop an experimental model of heat loss in metals
starting from heat conduction. Newton’s Law and Stefan-Boltzmann Law are not used as stan-
dards to compare with, but as tools that enable us to qualitatively understand our observations
and the final results of the proposed model. All this is evidenced by the constant attempts to
identify both laws within the model, the measurements carried out and its final parameters.

2 Theory
The rate of heat transferred by conduction through a material of thermal conductivity k, cross-
sectional area A and length ∆x, being held in contact between two bodies that have a temperature
difference ∆T , is given by

1
 ∆Q ∆T
= kA . (1)
∆t ∆x
An imaginary and definite amount of power P0 enters the material at all times from the hot
body. If the material is perfectly insulated, the same amount of power should arrive to the cold
body. This is hardly the case, however, due to the material constantly losing heat. The initial
power P0 will therefore decrease as it advances towards the cold body, and the heat flowing at
any point x in the material could be determined by the theoretical expression

P (x) = P0 − Ploss , (2)

where Ploss is the power being lost to the surroundings.
Both Newton’s law and the power formulation of Stefan-Boltzmann law state that heat loss
due to thermal radiation is directly proportional to the temperature difference between an object
and its surroundings. This simply means that the hotter an object is, the faster it loses heat.
The power through a material at smaller distances from its heat source will therefore be changing
much faster than at greater distances, which in an extremely simplistic view results in the change
of power through the length of the body P (x) being an exponential decay function. Thermal
radiation also depends directly on the surface area and on the emissivity of the material, therefore
the rate of heat loss would also change depending on these variables.
The imaginary block of initial power can be thought to have a constant speed at which it
moves. It thus takes this power a certain time to reach a certain position within the body, from
which it can be consequently concluded that the function P (x) is analogous to, or another way
to express Newton’s law of cooling, in which the temperature varies with respect to time and not
distance.
The present paper aims to develop an experimental expression for equation (3) using two
metal rods of known thermal conductivities. The ratios between the power at x = 0 i.e. P0 ,
and the cross-sectional area for each metal rod are expected to be equal, as both pieces were
studied under the same conditions. Also, the aluminium bar had a larger surface area, it is then
expected to lose heat more rapidly from radiation than the copper bar.

3 Method
An aluminium rod and a copper bar, both initially at room temperature, were placed on a
heating plate at 400◦ C, as shown in figure 1. The increasing temperatures at each point were
recorded for four to five minutes. The differences between these temperatures ∆T replaced into
equation (1) enable us to determine the power flowing at these certain points. To have a constant
rate of heat flowing into the metal bar, the temperature of the hot plate must be held constant.
When using myDAQ devices, and in regards to reading errors, big difficulties are to be
expected if the calibration of the thermistors is not correctly done before the experiment. The
values used for thermal conductivity in the calculations were 385 Wm−1 K−1 for the copper bar
and 205 Wm−1 K−1 for the aluminium bar[6]. Reasons for not using other values for k are
explained in the analysis section. Finally, when performing the experiment, temperatures that
were being recorded by two different thermistors started to measure similar values after 90◦ C,
coincidentally in both metal rods. This might have happened because the thermal conductivity
k is a function of temperature itself. For this reason some of the data was excluded for the
analysis.

2
Figure 1: A metal bar receives heat from a hot plate and several temperatures are measured along the length of the
rod.

4 Analysis and Results

Six temperatures were recorded for each metal rod during four to five minutes, in ranges from
20◦ C to 100◦ C. These measurements of temperature against time were linearly fitted, and five
temperature differences were calculated by subtracting the y-intercepts of the corresponding
adjacent lines. The data fitted was restricted to a certain range of values, as the rod and the hot
plate are intended to be in a steady state. Also, the thermal conductivity of materials varies with
temperature, and thus would make the data vary over different regions. This range of values was
identified to be where the slopes of the lines were the closest. The power flowing at the points
where the data was collected was then calculated using equation (1), and each of these values was
plotted against their position along the rod. This is shown in figure 2. Notice how the change
between the first two power measurements in both graphs is much greater than the one between
the latter points, even though they recorded the power over the same length ∆x. This illustrates
how more heat was being lost at the positions of higher temperatures along the bar. The error
bars of each point are the standard errors associated with the differences in y-intercepts of the
first linearisations.
The raw data was fitted with an exponential decay correlation analysis, in which a non-linear
least squares fit was implemented. The error bars were considered in the analysis, for it the lines
in figure 2 are weighted fits. The resultant functions have the form

P (x) = Pa + Ae−αx , (3)

where Pa , A and α are arbitrary constants. The values for P0 of the copper and aluminium bars
were (53.2 ± 22.1) W and (145.9 ± 23.7) W, respectively. The values for α were (19.3 ± 10.4) m−1
for the copper bar and (27.3 ± 5.2) m−1 for the aluminium bar. Having in mind the dependence
of Stefan-Boltzmann law on surface area and emissivity, the decrease rate α of the aluminium bar

3
 6 0

C o p p e r
5 0 A lu m in iu m

4 0
P o w e r (W )
3 0

2 0

1 0

0
5 1 0
D is ta n c e (c m )

Figure 2: Power flowing through two metal bars at different points along their lengths. The lines represent a weighted,
non-linear fit of the raw data, and show an exponential decay in the power flowing due to heat losses to the surroundings.
Error bars are standard errors associated with regression lines of previous measurements.

was expected to be higher for two reasons. First, the aluminium bar was larger than the copper
bar, and it thus has a larger surface area. Also, the values of thermal emissivity are generally
higher for aluminium than for copper[7, 8]. The relative differences between each value and its
respective standard error can be found to be quite significant. The reported adjusted R-square
values of the fits were 0.875 for the copper bar and 0.987 for the aluminium bar. Considering the
time and resources available for the completion of the experiment, the relative differences and
the R-square obtained values can be interpreted as an acceptable goodness of fit.
The ratio of the two initial powers was 2.74, and the ratio of the cross sectional areas of
the rods was 2.56. These values should always be similar as the amount of heat entering each
rod is proportional to its cross-sectional area. The ratio of the powers had a 4% difference
with the ratio of the areas, which shows good agreement with this general principle and high
accuracy overall. If the initial calculations of power done with equation (1) are performed using
the thermal conductivity values for pure aluminium and copper, at 100◦ C [9], the percentage
difference of the ratios rises up to 20%. This high difference can be attributed to the metal
bars used in the lab not being made completely of aluminium and copper, but of less pure alloy
variations.
One thing that ends up missing in the experiment is the physical meaning of the final pa-
rameters of the fit regressions, namely Pa , A and α. Ideally, a much more useful approach would
be to keep the cross-sectional area constant and to study how the final parameters change with
different materials, or the other way around, to vary the cross-sectional area while controlling for
the material. A larger set of data would allow to understand these dependencies and to create a
more general model of this specific system.

5 Summary
An educational investigation on the process of heat loss in two metal bars has been carried out,
producing a simple experimental model that relates the distance from the source of heat, to

4
the power flowing at that point in the bar. Observations across the study are evidence of the
presence of Newton’s and Stefan-Boltzmann law within the model and the system studied. The
final expression for the power flowing at different points along the rods exhibits an exponential
decay behaviour attributed to heat loss. The value for the ratios of power entering the bars has a
4% difference with the theoretically predicted value of the system, which comes from the ratio of
the cross-sectional areas of the bars. As stated above, for future improvements it is recommended
to expand the experimental observations in order to understand more exactly the impact of the
initial variables of the metals (surface area, thermal conductivity) on the parameters of the final
expression.

6 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Cameron Bromley, who was my lab partner for this experiment. This work
would not have been possible without the directions and help of Dr. Matt Mears.

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