Three-dimensional fundamental solutions for transient heat transfer by conduction in an unbounded medium, half-space, slab and layered media

Abstract

This paper presents analytical Green's functions for the transient heat transfer phenomena by conduction, for an unbounded medium, half-space, slab and layered formation when subjected to a point heat source. The transient heat responses generated by a spherical heat source are computed as Bessel integrals, following the transformations proposed by Sommerfeld [Sommerfeld A. Mechanics of deformable bodies. New York: Academic Press; 1950; Ewing WM, Jardetzky WS, Press F. Elastic waves in layered media. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1957]. The integrals can be modelled as discrete summations, assuming a set of sources equally spaced along the vertical direction. The expressions presented here allow the heat field inside a layered formation to be computed without fully discretizing the interior domain or boundary interfaces. The final Green's functions describe the conduction phenomenon throughout the domain, for a half-space and a slab. They can be expressed as the sum of the heat source and the surface terms. The surface terms need to satisfy the boundary conditions at the surfaces, which can be of two types: null normal fluxes or null temperatures. The Green's functions for a layered formation are obtained by adding the heat source terms and a set of surface terms, generated within each solid layer and at each interface. These surface terms are defined so as to guarantee the required boundary conditions, which are: continuity of temperatures and normal heat fluxes between layers. This formulation is verified by comparing the frequency responses obtained from the proposed approach with those where a double-space Fourier transformation along the horizontal directions [Tadeu A, António J, Simões N. 2.5D Green's functions in the frequency domain for heat conduction problems in unbounded, half-space, slab and layered media. CMES: Computer Model Eng Sci 2004;6(1):43–58] is used. In addition, time domain solutions were compared with the analytical solutions that are known for the case of an unbounded medium, a half-space and a slab.