Computation of Conduction and Duct Flow Heat Transfer PDF

Preface

This book has a rather long history. After teaching a graduate-level course on computational heat transfer and fluid flow at the University of Minnesota during 1975-1979. I wrote a textbook for that course (Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow. Hemisphere. 1980). Subsequently. 1 also started teaching a two-day short course on the subject at various national meetings of the ASME. Whereas the textbook and the short courses were very well received. there seemed a need for a longer course that went into greater detail and provided a first-hand experience of working with a computer program. In 1981. such a course was designed: it was a five-day course for practicing engineers. originally taught by me along with Dr. Rabi Baliga. By now. I have offered the course over 12 times in a few different versions.

For the five-day course. the computer program to be used had to satisfy two types of requirements. On one hand. it had Lo be interesting to use. applicable to· practical problems. and capable or illustrating many important features of our calculation procedure. On the other hand. the program had to be simple enough so that the course participants could. during the five-day period. understand its structure. appreciate its capabilities and limitations. learn the variable name,. and apply it to a number of physical situations. (I did not want them to treat the program as a black box and push a few buttons.) It was. therefore. decided to limit the program to conduction-type problems but illustrate its use for both heat conduction and duct llow. Thus. the computer program CONDUCT was born

While concentrating on the teaching of the numerical techniques to graduate students and practicing engineers. I also began to look for ways of bringing computational methods into the undergraduate curriculum. Once agam. the considerations used in designing the five-day cour,e seemed to apply to an undergraduate course as well. Therefore. a cour,e ba,ed on 1he computer program CONDUCT was an obvious choice. ln the summer of 1987. I extracted the material related to the computer program from the lecture note, of the five-day course and expanded it in the 101111 of a preliminary ver,ion of thi~ text boo!,.. Since then. the book has been included in the materiab of the five-day cour,e ancl also used as a textbook for a new course on Computational Heat Tran,fcr ,iartecl in Fall 1987 at the Lniversity of Minnesota. The cour,e i, taken by 'enior-level undergraduate students ancl also by graduate stuclenb from variou, engineering departments.

In teaching this course (and other similar course' at the graduate level l. I use a certain format. The course emphasizes physical understanding and the ability to solve physical problems. I begin with the physical and mathematical description of the phenomena of interest. develop the numerical method. and describe the general-purpose computer program. The rest of the course is devoted to the presentation of numerous examples or the adaptation of the program to particular problems. Whereas we begin with very simple examples. we eventually deal with quite sophisticated applications. While this goes on. the students apply the computer program. as a part of their home assignments. to a large number of additional problems. When they are exposed to the solution activity for so many problems. they not only develop the problem-solving skills but also enhance their understanding of the physical processes

Author: Suhas V. Patankar