Introduction to Engineering Heat Transfer

Chapters 2 through 6 consider heat transfer in a stationary medium where energy transport occurs entirely by conduction and is governed by Fourier’s Law. Thus far, convection has been considered primarily as a boundary condition for these conduction problems. Convection refers to the transfer of energy that occurs between a surface and a moving medium, most often a liquid or gas flowing through a duct or over an object. Convection processes include fluid motion and the related energy transfer. The additional terms in an energy balance related to the fluid flow often dominate the now familiar energy transport by conduction. The presence of fluid motion complicates heat transfer problems substantially and links the heat transfer problem with an underlying fluid dynamics problem. The complete solution to most convection problems therefore requires sophisticated computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tools that are beyond the scope of this book.