Heat Conduction with Freezing or Thawing
Abstract
Freezing of water or melting of ice are phenomena that underlie many important scientific and engineering studies of cold regions. Mathematical methods of treating these phase-change heat transfer problems are critical to understanding and dealing with the problems that freeze-thaw causes. While convection may be an important heat transfer mode, it can often be neglected without significant error. This report deals only with problems for which conduction is the basic heat transfer mode or for which the solutions can be obtained in terms of conduction-like problems. Where possible, exact solutions are presented, but since these are quite limited for phase-change problems, approximate solutions are examined in some detail. The approximate methods are 1) the perturbation method, which leads to quasi-stationary techniques, 2) the heat balance integral method, and 3) Biot's variational principle. THe theory associated with these methods is discussed in the appendixes. THe available exact solutions are derived and explained. Graphical solutions are used to generate design curves-such as those for phase-change depth, temperature, and heat flow vs time. The results are presented so as to be easily accessible to practicing engineers without recourse to elaborate calculations. This is especially true for application to soil systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1986
- Accession Number
- ADA196143
Entities
People
- Virgil J. Lunardini
Organizations
- Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory