Hai-Feng Peng

A radial integration boundary element method for solving transient heat conduction problems with heat sources and variable thermal conductivity

ABSTRACT A new radial integration boundary element method (RIBEM) for solving transient heat conduction problems with heat sources and variable thermal conductivity is presented in this article. The Green’s function for the Laplace equation is served as the fundamental solution to derive the boundary-domain integral equation. The transient terms are first discretized before applying the weighted residual technique that is different from the previous RIBEM for solving a transient heat conduction problem. Due to the strategy for dealing with the transient terms, temperature, rather than transient terms, is approximated by the radial basis function; this leads to similar mathematical formulations as those in RIBEM for steady heat conduction problems. Therefore, the present method is very easy to code and be implemented, and the strategy enables the assembling process of system equations to be very simple. Another advantage of the new RIBEM is that only 1D boundary line integrals are involved in both 2D and 3D problems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time to completely transform domain integrals to boundary line integrals for a 3D problem. Several 2D and 3D numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness, accuracy, and potential of the present RIBEM.

Radial integration boundary element method for heat conduction problems with convective heat transfer boundary

ABSTRACT A new boundary domain integral equation with convective heat transfer boundary is presented to solve variable coefficient heat conduction problems. Green’s function for the Laplace equation is used to derive the basic integral equation with varying heat conductivities, and as a result, domain integrals are included in the derived integral equations. The existing domain integral is converted into an equivalent boundary integral using the radial integration method by expressing the normalized temperature as a series of radial basis functions. This treatment results in a pure boundary element analysis algorithm and requires no internal cells to evaluate the domain integral. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the present method.