The Robin boundary condition for modelling heat transfer

Abstract

The heat exchange between a rigid body and a fluid is usually modelled by the Robin boundary condition saying that the heat flux through the interface is proportional to the difference between their temperatures. Such interface law describes only the unilateral heat exchange. The goal of this paper is to compare the Robin boundary condition starting with the transmission condition (the temperature and the flux continuity) using rigorous mathematical analysis. Our main results are the following. We first show that a generalized version of the Robin boundary condition can be justified. Second, we prove that replacing the generalized by the standard Robin condition can be justified for high convection velocity if the conductivity of the surrounding liquid is much lower than that of the body. On the other hand, if the fluid conducts much better than the body, then the effective boundary condition is shown not to be the Robin one, but it involves second-order derivatives. We strongly believe that those findings bring new insights to the physics of the heat exchange processes and, thus, could prove useful in engineering practice.