Effects of Boundary Conditions on Thermal Response of a Cellulose Acetate Layer Using Hottel’s Zonal Method

Abstract

Energy can transfer internally by radiation in addition to conduction in translucent polymers. Since radiant propagation is very rapid, it can provide energy within the layer more quickly than diffusion by heat conduction. Thus, the transient thermal response of a layer for combined radiative and conduction may be extremely different from that of conduction alone. In this paper, the behavior of a heat conducting, absorbing, and emitting layer of Cellulose Acetate layer is investigated during the transient interval when both conductive and radiative heat transfer are considered. Specifically, the effects of boundary conditions on the response of the layer are considered here. These boundary conditions include both conductive boundary conditions, such as convection coefficient and convective fluid temperature, and radiation boundary conditions, like radiation surrounding temperature and specular reflectivity. To this end, the governing differential equations including the equation of radiative heat transfer within the material coupled to the transient energy equation with radiative terms are presented. The solution procedure is based on nodal analysis and Hottel’s zonal method extended by the ray tracing method. The transient energy equation including the radiative internal energy source is solved using a time marching finite difference procedure with variable space and time increments.